


Often Wrong

by RowenaZahnrei



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Betrayal, Crystalline Entity - Freeform, Daystrom Institute, Death and loss, Electronic Consciousness, Galor IV, Gen, Imagination, Omicron Theta Colony, Positronic Brain, Sociopathy, emotional breakdown, scifi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2018-04-22 18:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 22
Words: 43,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4845077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowenaZahnrei/pseuds/RowenaZahnrei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story told in many parts of Soong and of Lore, of Juliana and (eventually) of Data's lost childhood with the family he never knew...</p><p>Act II: In the aftermath of Soong's trial, Soong and Juliana work to reconstruct their lives, start a new family, but what of Lore? Can the android learn to build a life of his own, or has the traumatic input he experienced altered his perception of human ethics - even, reality itself?</p><p>Story In Progress.  Comments, reviews, and opinions are welcome and much appreciated! :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek: The Next Generation or any of its intriguing characters. Please don't sue me or steal my story. Thanks!

Often Wrong  
By Rowena Zahnrei

Part One

How had it come to this?

Noonian sat in the cramped shuttle with his folded hands pressed to his mouth, fighting to control his breathing, to force his swollen eyes to stop streaming those hot, stinging tears...

The reddish dust from the cave stained his wife's pale face, her torn and bloodied clothes. It clung to the sweat on her forehead, dulled the shine of her tousled auburn hair.

He'd tried to wipe it off. First, he'd set course and engaged the autopilot, but right after that... He'd curled her onto the shuttle's narrow cot, shallowly inset into the wall, dug out the first aid kit, and done his best to dress her wounds. But there were so many…not just cuts and scratches but gouges…fractures… And what could he do? What the hell did she expect him to do?

Circuits, he could deal with. Tritanium alloy, duroplast sheeting… But torn flesh and broken bones…? The awful, metallic scent of her blood as it seeped into the thin mattress…

The sight of her injuries had made him sick on the floor and, when he'd finally climbed to his knees, he was shaking, his hands trembling too much to do more than cover his restive wife with a blanket. That's when he'd thought to dampen a towel with disinfectant and clean her face…she'd appreciate that when she woke up, that he'd cleaned her face…but he only succeeded in smudging the clay-like dust, leaving long streaks across her cheeks and temples.

Noonian's shoulders shook, his throat choked by a sob that was almost a laugh. Those streaks… They made her look like a kid who'd gotten into her father's shoe polish. Just a silly, innocent little kid, napping on the couch…

Not a woman who had just escaped the wanton destruction of her planet, her colony, her home…

Their family…

She was too young to be facing this. Too young to be tied to someone like him. Her mother had been right. Their marriage had been just another terrible mistake. What had she been thinking anyway, this brilliant, beautiful young woman, binding her life, her dreams, to such a selfish old fool? What was he, but a thoughtless, aging failure who had always been so wrong, so terribly, fatally wrong…

Why should his wife pay for his mistakes? His arrogance? Why should his sons...?

"It's my fault, Julie," he whispered against his fingers, his bloodshot eyes wide and just a little wild. "I'm the monster. Me. Just me, OK? But, you have to wake up, now, darling. You have to open your eyes and talk to me. You know it's no good to leave me alone with my thoughts…please…"

A shudder ran through his wife's fragile form and she moaned. 

Noonian surged closer and took her hand, squeezing it between his own.

"No...! No, no, you can't leave me, Juliana," he choked, "Not now. I promise I'll fix this, somehow, I just… Oh, God…"

How had it come to this?

To Be Continued, Some 26 Years Earlier...


	2. Chapter 2

And now, to the Daystrom Cybernetics Annex on Galor IV, some 26 years earlier...

Part Two

"Learning Observation Recall Experiment," Dr. Ira Graves read off the electronic placard announcing his colleague's upcoming seminar. He scratched a hand through his stubbly, russet beard. "Sounds so...academic. Why not call it LORE, for short? 'S catchier, not to mention easier for those damned idiot tech journalists to spell."

"Lore, eh?" Noonian snorted over his datapad. "Not bad. Kind of mysterious. And he's been wanting a real name."

Graves furrowed his forehead. 

"What do you mean, 'he's been wanting'?" he said, his faded British accent strengthening as his voice grew harsher. "Computers don't 'want,' Soong, be they duotronic or positronic. I've warned you before about anthropomorphizing this project of yours."

"I'm not anthropomorphizing anything," Noon retorted, and shoved the datapad into his satchel. "He told me he wants a real name. I told him I'd think about it."

"When did this start?" Graves pressed, his frown growing deeper.

"Remember that new program I was telling you about? The one to handle choice and preference?"

"But that was just theory," Graves said. "Numbers on a screen. Don't tell me you—"

"Finished it? Installed it? Tested it?" Noon said, a cocky little smirk twisting his lips. "Done and done."

"And?"

"And what? It works, Ira. My project does just what it says in the abstract: it thinks."

"Learn, observe, recall – that's what it says in the abstract," Graves snapped. "Thinking is something else entirely, and you know it. But, preference? Wants and desires? That's your imagination talking. You bring that up tomorrow and the panel's going to tear you apart. Again."

"It's true, Ira," Noon insisted. "Look, I was going to wait until the seminar tomorrow, but…here…"

The young man dug deep into his satchel and pulled out a textured, silvery box, about the size of a human skull. 

"You've been listening to all this, haven't you?"

"I have," the box replied in a flat, mechanical simulation of Noonian's own voice.

"Good grief, Soong, you've been carrying it around with you?" Graves said. "You know you can't take experimental equipment out of the lab unless—"

"Give it a break, Ira. I've got my degree, you're not my supervisor any longer. Besides, Lore isn't lab equipment. He's a functioning positronic computer. 'My' functioning positronic computer. The only one ever made. Lore," Noon addressed the box, "what do you think of the new name your Uncle Ira just gave you?"

"Lore," the box repeated, as if testing out the sound. "The name is acceptable. In fact, I like it. Thank you, Uncle Ira."

"…God…" Graves moaned, bringing an exasperated hand to his head. "The computer says it likes its name. And it's thanking me, no less!"

"I'm telling you, Ira, I'm sure I've really cracked it this time," Noon said, cradling the shiny box like a proud parent. "Asimov's dream of a stable, workable positronic brain is finally making the leap from science fiction to science fact. My Lore represents the start…the start of a whole new dimension of cybernetic intelligence. Perhaps even cybernetic consciousness."

"Now that I know you shouldn't bring up in your talk tomorrow," Graves warned.

"Why not? With Lore here as a functional prototype, who's to say—"

"Noonian!" Graves snapped. "Feet, on the ground, now. All this dreamy speculation is fine when you're talking with me, but do not get up in front of that panel and start spouting promises. We've both been down this road before. Prototypes fail. Theories change as work progresses. If you tie your reputation to developing an actual, stable positronic brain – not a computer system, like Lore, but an actual brain – and it doesn't pan out, your future at this institute—"

Noon held up a hand.

"All right, all right," he said, "I get what you're saying."

Graves squinted at the younger man.

"I'm not convinced that you do," he rumbled. "Politics isn't just for politicians, Dr. Soong. It exists in academia too. Like it or not, as long as you're a researcher here, the public image you project reflects back on this institution. That means every word, every deed, every publication. Now, to people like you and me, conscious, self-aware computers are a dream, an ambition. But, to most of the rest of the universe, the very notion of sentient machines is a nightmare, a threat to be feared. That kind of publicity, we can't afford. So, take it easy tomorrow. Stick with what's done, what's provable. Demonstrate your Lore's ability to observe, and recall its observations. That has crowd appeal, it's useful, and it has direct, real-world applications that 'justify' our department's research to the institute, to the public, and to Starfleet. That's good stuff, beneficial stuff the institute can put in its newsletter and you can put in your CV. But do not – do not – start proselytizing about conscious computers and sentient androids! Those exist in your imagination, Soong. Only in your imagination."

"Starfleet," Noon scoffed, and tightened his grip on his little positronic prototype. "All right, Ira. I hear you. I'll play to the crowd tomorrow, just like you said, and I'll keep my theories to myself. For now. But I'm telling you this: no computer of my design is ever going to be put to military use, no matter how 'benevolent' the 'Fleet pretends to be. 'Peaceful missions of exploration,' my ass. Tell that to the Iotians, or the Ekosians, or the countless other victims of Starfleet weapons and cultural contamination! What Starfleet would do with a real thinking, feeling android – or to it—!"

"You're preaching to the choir here, Noon," Graves said. "You don't have to convince me of Starfleet hypocrisy when it comes to 'new' life forms. But that doesn't change the fact that Starfleet's needs drive a significant portion of our research and development facilities. They're what allow theory-driven projects like ours the freedom they have. So, I'm warning you one last time to bite your tongue, and keep it bit until tomorrow's talk is over and done."

"Yes, sir," Soong said, and gave the older man a mocking salute. "You got all that, Lore?"

"Uncle Ira says, tomorrow, you are to put me through a staged routine and refrain from offending or frightening the media or the institute's backers by demonstrating my more…unsettling…abilities. Is that not an accurate summation, Father?"

Graves's eyes bugged from his head. 

"Excuse me?" he exclaimed.

"I'd say you've got it just about right, my boy," Soong said, staring Graves straight in the eye. "See you tomorrow, Ira."

"Noonian!" Graves shouted after Soong's departing back. "Noonian, what's with this 'Father' business? Noonian, you are not walking away from me!"

"Tomorrow!" Noon called back with a wave. "We'll be good, I promise!"

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TOS: A Piece of the Action, Patterns of Force; TNG: The Schizoid Man.


	3. Chapter 3

Part Three  
Some Five Years Later...

"Father, you have an incoming message!"

The mechanized voice came from a sleek, heavily modified computer terminal Soong kept in the corner of his office, just across from the room's only window. A small, silvery box was wired in from the top of the complex device. To the casual observer, the work station looked pretty much like any other suped-up super-computer in the university's cybernetics department-unless that observer had an eye for abstract art. Then, with that box as its head, it took on an eerily human shape, like a man sitting thoughtfully with its arms resting against its knees.

Soong looked up from grumbling at a stack of student lab reports.

"Who is it, Lore?" he asked.

"It is Uncle Ira," the computer announced. "He is calling from the Daystrom Institute on Galor IV."

"Damn..." Soong sighed, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his tired eyes. "All right, Lore, put the bastard through."

There was a compliant chirp, and Ira Graves's smarmy, bearded face appeared on the monitor screen. Soong felt a wave of loathing wash through him.

"So, Noon, how's Texas?"

"Hot." Soong scowled at the image of his former mentor. "I think I can actually see the local accent seeping into my speech patterns. How's life at the Daystrom Institute?"

"Same as when you were here," Graves said. "Actually, not quite the same. It's a lot less interesting without you around, mouthing off during seminars and throwing the higher-ups into apoplectic fits with your AI demos. Speaking of…is your Lore device still functional?"

Soong nodded. 

"And getting more observant by the day. I'm convinced that computer is self-aware, Ira."

"Hmm," Graves grunted non-committedly. "And your positronic brain prototype? Any progress on that?"

Soong's scowl returned with a vengeance.

"This isn't Galor IV, you know," he said defensively. "It's a teaching university, not a straight-up research facility. Most of my time is eaten away by teaching, and the rest by grading student assignments and exams. Add in the heat and the crowds here on Earth and it's hell, Ira. Absolute hell."

"I warned you to keep your mouth shut, Noon," Graves said. "To publicize your work in small, easy-to-swallow chunks. But no, you had to let loose, talking yourself along tangents that couldn't support your weight. Like always."

"You know as well as I do that I did not falsify one iota of my research," Soong said hotly. "I promised nothing I can't put into practice, eventually. Lore really can think, and make requests, and state his preferences. And as for emotions, I've already started work on—"

"Noonian, stop," Graves said. "You want too much too soon, that's always been your problem. Research happens in stages. You can't just jump to the end. You have to slow down and show your work, every link and leap of logic. That's how science works."

"If I thought like that, I'd never get anything done," Soong muttered.

"Oh, so you're getting a lot done at that Earth school, then?" Graves retorted.

"Shut up," Soong snapped. "I wouldn't be stuck in this job if you'd stepped in. It was fully within your power to stop those Daystrom idiots from drumming me out."

"As I recall events," Graves said, "you were the one who walked out on them, in a self-righteous huff no less. Something about greener pastures and greater opportunities? Ah, and wasn't there a line about there being other fish in the sea?"

"I'm not going back, Ira," Soong said.

"I'm not inviting you back, Noonian," Graves told him. "You're a right pain to work with, and at least as egomaniacal a bastard as I am. Which is truly saying something. Frankly, I'm shocked and appalled that university trusts a self-centered rogue like you to teach all those impressionable young minds."

"Indeed? Well, at least I don't come on to every woman on campus like some pathetic, aging Lothario," Soong snarled. "You're a pig, Ira, and you're not half as clever as you think you are."

"Says the celibate misanthrope," Graves snarled back. "You're defective, Soong. You have no human feeling, no hot, molten core. The only passion you know is given over to those prattling machines of yours."

"Then how is it I can love you so much, O brilliant mentor," Soong spat with snarky sarcasm. He leaned closer to the screen, his expression darkening. "I know you, Ira, at least as well as you know me. You're not in this for the work, you're in it because you're afraid. Afraid of aging and fading away. But that's not what our work is for! Look in the mirror, Graves. Mortality is part of the human condition. Your problem is you can't make your swollen ego understand the universe does not rely solely on your imagination to keep running."

Graves's eyes bulged and his face reddened beneath his beard. Soong braced himself for the explosion, but after a moment Graves released his breath and cast a curdled smirk at his former student.

"Don't let that teaching job get you too far behind in your work," Graves said. "The Institute may think you're a flake, but they don't know your theories like I do. If anyone can crack artificial consciousness it'll be either me or you, and I've got backers and better facilities. And a head start. It'll be my legacy, Soong. My name in the textbooks. Not yours."

Soong clenched his fists, but refused to let himself rise to the bait.

"You suck, Ira. I've got my Lore and half a positronic brain. I'd say that puts me ahead."

"We'll see," Graves said, and smiled. "Take care of yourself, Soong. I'd hate to win by default."

"Ass," Soong retorted, and cut communication before Graves could sneak in the last word.

"Um…Professor Soong?"

Soong swallowed back his irritation, rolled his eyes and swiveled his chair to face the incoming student. He frowned.

"I know you, don't I?"

The young woman straightened her shoulders, tucking her long, auburn hair behind her ears.

"O'Donnell," she said in a lilting, Irish accent. "Juliana O'Donnell. I'm applying to the doctoral program here...you scheduled our interview for today…?"

"Yeah, right, sit down," Soong said, clearing a space on the rectangular table he was supposed to use for tutorials. "So, Ms. O'Donnell. What brings you here, to our cybernetics department?"

"Honest answer?"

He smiled.

"Honest answer."

"You," she said. "Your work at the Daystrom Institute. The promises you made – promises about breathing life, even consciousness, into mechanical constructs… I want to be a part of that."

"Why?"

"Human consciousness is one of the greatest, most enduring scientific mysteries," she said earnestly. "I believe we will never come close to understanding our own minds until we can reproduce our sense of conscious awareness in a construct of our own making."

"And that's what you want to do?" he asked, pressing his folded hands to his chin. "Understand the human mind?"

"I want to understand...life…" she said, a little shyly. "The creative spark that allows us to imagine and dream, to appreciate art and enjoy music. I want to have a hand in developing artificial life for its own sake, not for any sort of human-centric purpose. And I came here because…I believe…that is your dream too."

Soong leaned back in his chair and took in a slow, reflective breath through his nose. 

The young woman maintained her straight posture, regarding him with a steady, searching eye.

"Go home," he said.

"What-?"

"Go home," he repeated, and turned back to his heavily modified computer console. "You'll get your acceptance letter in a few weeks."

"You mean-? You'll take me as your doctoral student?"

"I mean," he glanced at her over his shoulder, "I already have. See you in the fall, Ms. O'Donnell."

To Be Continued...


	4. Chapter 4

Part Four  
About Four and a Half Years Later…

"Seriously, Juliana, what do you see in that guy?" Kenji said from across the cluttered lab table.

"I don't know what you mean," she responded absently, her eyes fixed on the lines and lines of code scrolling across her screen. "I think we need to modify section 3A. Just here," she pointed. "That should fix the glitch we've been getting."

Kenji left his station to peer over her shoulder, his half-chewed computer stylus dangling from his mouth.

"Yeah…" he said. "OK, I'll make a note. You can start the calculations."

"Already have," she muttered, her fingers quick and efficient on the keypad.

This was definitely one thing she wouldn't miss about postgraduate work, once it was finally over – having to work with, and within, a cohort. It wasn't that she didn't like Kenji, or the other postgrads on her research team, but she hated having to rely on them to do their part of the work so she could finish hers. Most of their final project was based on her ideas anyway – a concept she'd brought with her when she'd switched supervisors the previous semester. Why couldn't the university just let her work on it alone?

She heard Kenji behind her, munching that disgusting touchpad stylus, and sighed.

"Have you considered chewing gum instead?" she said.

The young man looked confused, then his eyes widened and he sheepishly snatched the ruined stylus from his mouth.

"Sorry," he said. "It's a habit."

"I know."

"Look…Juliana…I don't mean to be rude or anything, but…"

Juliana closed her eyes, then swiveled her chair to face him.

"What?" she said. "What do you want to know, Kenji? Did I switch supervisors for personal reasons? Yes. Was it because I was dating Dr. Soong? No. Engaging in a personal relationship with a student would be an unacceptable abuse of his position, not to mention entirely out of character for someone like him. So you can get whatever thoughts you and the others may have been thinking about me, or about him, right out of your heads. Now and forever. Understand?"

Kenji held up his hands.

"All right, all right," he said. "It's just…he's so weird, you know?"

"What do you mean, 'weird'?" she asked.

"Well, it's lots of things," he said uncomfortably. "I mean, I like his lectures – he has this totally different way of visualizing equations – but, he doesn't…he doesn't seem to click with the other professors, you know? He's always off on his own, like he's stuck in a bubble no one else can see. And it's just creepy the way he's programmed his office computer to call him 'Father.' Giving it a name's one thing, but having it call him 'Father'? I mean, who does that?"

"Dr. Soong didn't program his computer to call him 'Father,'" Juliana told him. "That was Lore's own idea. Dr. Soong let him because he said it was a significant reminder about our purpose as cyberneticists. We have a responsibility to our creations, whether they're our children, our designer pets, or our computer systems."

"That does sound like something he would say," Kenji said, and made a face. "Probably why most of the department thinks he's just this side of crackers."

"Dr. Soong is not mad!" Juliana said, though her voice came out sounding more defensive than she would have liked. "He just isn't social, that's all, which means he's no good at defending himself against these ridiculous rumors. He'll talk with people just fine if they come to him, but it simply doesn't occur to him to seek out social connections. He just sort of…lives in his head."

Kenji scrunched up his nose.

"Lives in his head…right… So…you're honestly saying there was nothing between you at all?" he said. "That, those years you worked together, he wasn't even the slightest bit interested?"

"Honestly? I don't even think it fully registered with him that I was female," Juliana said, and shook her head. "Listen, Kenji… I switched supervisors because Dr. Soong and I had a difference of opinion regarding his prototype positronic brain," she said flatly. "He seemed to think I was stepping on his toes, so I backed off. OK? Besides, I have my own ideas to pursue. Ideas I wouldn't have been able to develop fully if I let myself stay absorbed in his work, his projects." She regarded him. "Is any of this getting through?"

Kenji nodded slowly.

"Then, you don't have a thing for him?"

"No, I do not."

Kenji's slow nod became a smile.

"That's so great," he said. "Because, you know how we work next to each other, like, every day… And, it's like, I've been wanting to ask you out for the longest time, but I always thought—"

"Kenji!" Juliana buried her face in her hands, her auburn hair falling over her forehead. "I don't believe this. You're as bad as you thought he was!" 

She looked up. 

"Kenji, we're colleagues! We work together, for goodness sakes! Please, let's just concentrate on that, on our project. We're so close to earning our degree…I don't want to be distracted by anything else."

"You don't want to be distracted?" Kenji said. "What about me?" He reached for her hand. She tried not to recoil, remembering that chewed up stylus… "Juliana, do you have any idea what you do to me?"

Oh, my God… she winced, forcing herself to think fast. 

"Kenji, I can't—I have a boyfriend!"

"What?" Kenji dropped her hand like a dead bird. "But, you just said—"

"I said I wasn't involved with Dr. Soong! I didn't say I wasn't involved with anyone at all! I'm going out with...Danny—that's his name," she said, grasping the name from an ancient song she'd always liked. "He's from back home. In Ireland. We talk together all the time, him and me."

Kenji hissed through his teeth and turned away. 

"I should have known you'd have a boyfriend," he muttered. "Girls like you always do."

Something in his tone made her frown.

"What do you mean, 'girls like me'?"

"You know what I mean."

Juliana bristled.

"Oh, no. Don't you even dare, Kenji Sullivan," she said. "I have never said or done anything that would lead you to—"

A knock on the lab door make them both jump. Juliana turned to see Dr. Soong fidgeting in the overlit corridor.

"Ms. O'Donnell," he said. "Could I talk with you a moment?"

"Of course, Professor. Excuse me, Kenji," she said coldly, and strode from the room.

"Noonian, what is it?" she said, as soon as they were well out of earshot. "You look terrible!"

"I'm so sorry to bother you, Juliana," he said. "But, you're the only one I could come to. The only one who would understand…"

"We should talk in your office, not here in the hall," she said, already leading the way. "I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea about this."

Soong looked confused. 

"I don't understand."

"You wouldn't," she said. "Come on."

Soong's office was across the skybridge from her lab. Juliana strode in and gave the silvery box that topped Soong's computer station a friendly pat. 

"Hello, Lore," she said.

"Juliana!" Lore greeted. "It has been a long time."

"I know, pet. I'm sorry," she said. "I'll try to drop by more often, OK?"

"I do not believe that to be a likely scenario," Lore said.

"He's right," Soong said, closing the office door. He gestured for her to take a seat, and flopped into his swivel chair.

"What are you talking about?" Juliana asked. "What's going on?"

Soong leaned forward and dragged his fingers through his unbrushed hair.

"I just added two and two and got eight," he said, his leg jiggling agitatedly. "Again, and again, and again, and again."

"And, translated into normal, human speak, that means…?" Juliana prompted, familiar with his cryptic ways.

"It means I have to leave," he said, surging up from his chair and pacing across the heavily cluttered room. "I have to take Lore and Archie and disappear. It's the only way to save them."

"Save them from what?"

She stood up and caught his arm on his way past her, forcing him to look her in the face.

"Noonian, I'm not in your head, remember? Please, try to make sense."

Soong nodded, and sank back in his chair, rocking slightly as he forced himself to put his tangled feelings into words.

"It's Ira," he said.

"You mean Dr. Graves? From the Daystrom Institute?"

"I mean the rancid rat bastard," Soong corrected. "From that prison camp for model builders. He's been waiting for this, waiting for me to make the announcement, to tell the world I've finally done it, I've finally constructed a working positronic brain."

Juliana gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. 

"Oh…Noonian, you mean, you've done it? Your Archie…?"

"Last night," he said. "He spoke to me, Juliana. Archie spoke to me. And I…I had to tell someone, but there was no one, you know? I…I don't have people to tell things to…no real community here, or anywhere. But, there was Ira…and I know I shouldn't have, but I…I just had to share this feeling…this incredible joy…with someone who might understand…at least, a little…"

"What did Graves say?" Juliana asked worriedly.

"It wasn't what he said," Soong told her. "His words are just air. It was…something in his face. In his eyes. This look of…of outright cupidity. He tried to hide it when he saw I saw. And that's when I realized…"

He swallowed, his blue eyes rimmed with red.

"He's had me on the hook, all this time," he said, his voice taking on an agonized rasp. "All these years, he's given me slack, letting me think I had my freedom, that I was on my own. But the whole time he was just waiting, Juliana, waiting to reel me in, to pull me back under his wing, to claim my visions, my creations, as mere branches of his own work. And he can do it. He has the ego to do it, the connections I don't have, the forked politician's tongue that can twist the truth into lies, the kind of lies people prefer to hear and believe even when the truth is staring them smack in the face. And he's smart. Crafty smart. Charismatic smart. Already, he's out there calling himself the 'father' of my work. It's all over the newsfeeds! My invention, my positronic brain, is being publicized without me! And, I know his next step, Juliana. He warned me long ago, even though I don't think he knew he was doing it. But I remember. He claimed my Lore was experimental equipment – implying he was property. Property of the Daystrom Institute. Property taken from Ira's lab! So, where does all of this leave me? Where does it leave my boys? They look on me as their father, how can I allow them to be taken to that institute as, as things to be exploited, dissected? No one there will care about who they are…what they think…how they feel…!"

"Noonian," Juliana said. "Noonian, calm down. Now, it sounds to me like you've thought yourself straight into a worst-case scenario. Have you even considered going to the dean? The university knows your work is your own. They might be able to recommend some kind of legal action to protect you, as well as Lore and Archie."

"I can't risk it," Soong said. "These people here don't trust me. They don't even like me. I can't just hand our lives, our freedom, over to their bureaucratic clutches. That's why I have to disappear. Vanish. And I will. I just couldn't…go…without telling you first."

Juliana pursed her lips against her teeth.

"Oh, Noonian," she said. "I'm so sorry. If I hadn't left your lab, I would have been there when you finished Archie. You would have had someone there…someone to share your beautiful moment."

"No, don't blame yourself," Soong said. "You were right to go…I was being selfish. I let my ego drive your work as well as mine, and that wasn't fair. That's how Graves works…how he controls his researchers, and their research, and always keeps himself on top of the pile. I only recognized what I'd been doing after it was done, and I can't apologize enough."

Juliana nodded, and slapped her hands against her thighs.

"Yes," she said. "Well, if you must go, the least I can do is help you pack. Is there anything you—"

"No," Noonian said again. "I don't want to get you involved in this. I just wanted to say good-bye, and to let you know…"

"Let me know what?" she asked.

He snorted slightly through his nose and shook his head.

"You're special," he said, and almost smiled. "I've never really had a friend…not a human one, anyway… You're the closest I've ever come to…feeling that connection. Thank you."

Juliana's heart tightened in her chest, and she felt her eyes begin to sting. Without pausing to consider her actions, she dove straight at him, wrapping her arms so tightly around his ribs she was afraid she'd leave bruises. Soong smelled like his lab, like metal and plastic, electricity and chemicals.

"This isn't right," she said, loosening her embrace and staring him straight in the eye. "You should fight. I'll fight with you."

"And what would I be fighting for, hm?" Soong asked her. "My reputation? My pride?"

"Your work. Your name," Juliana said fiercely.

"Not if it means risking the lives of my creations," he said, and pulled away from her, his hands by his sides. "I know my choices. I also know my responsibilities. I have to put Lore and Archie first. That's the price of being a parent to non-human lifeforms. You remember that, young lady. In case you decide to try this yourself, someday."

Juliana sniffled hard and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

"Where will you go? The three of you?" she asked.

"If I'm lucky," he said, "somewhere someone will recognize there are three of us." 

He smiled. 

"Good luck, Juliana. You will make a first-rate scientist."

Juliana tried to respond, but her throat was too tight. She swallowed, then whispered, "Will I ever see you again?"

"If I'm very lucky," he said, and opened his office door. "Goodbye, Juliana."

"Goodbye, Professor," she said. "I'll miss you."

It wasn't until his door had closed and she stood alone in the corridor that she realized just how much.

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TNG: The Schizoid Man; Brothers; The Measure of a Man; Inheritance.


	5. Chapter 5

Part Five  
several months later, somewhere on Terlina III...

Soong lay sprawled on his battered, brown couch, a bowl of popcorn balanced on his chest. On the viewer in front of him, an ancient black and white film was playing out, in which a blonde femme fatale was duping a tall insurance salesman into helping her carry out a plot to kill her husband.

"Father?"

"Hmm," Soong grunted, his eyes fixed on the screen. "Lore, why don't you watch this with me? Made in 1944, if you can believe it. Edward G. Robinson's character, Barton Keyes, is just fantastic. When he lights that match at the end… That's the moment, son. That's what it's all about."

"Father, you've been lying on that couch for four days."

"So?"

"You have done nothing but watch that same film in a continuous loop for all that time."

"Not true," Soong said. "I breathed, ate, drank, slept, and got up to go to the replicator and the bathroom a few times. Oh, and I rolled over."

"Father, you are human. You need to exercise your muscles or they will atrophy."

"What, rolling over isn't exercise? Look, if you're not going to watch Keyes with me, be quiet so I can hear, OK?"

"Father?"

Soong groaned.

"Father!"

"What, Lore?"

The computer paused. Soong frowned, and hoisted himself into a sitting position, blinking his vid-weary eyes until he could focus on the silvery little box.

"All right, all right, you have my attention," he said, and reached over to turn off the viewer. "What's up?"

"I have a question," the box replied.

"Shoot."

"What is death?"

Soong's head sagged down to his chest and he flopped back onto the cushions.

"Death," he said, "is just a punchline. Life…life… Life is the joke."

"I do not understand."

"I don't expect you to," Soong replied.

"Why do you insist on purposefully confusing me?"

"Because you asked a question that has no satisfactory answer," Soong told him, and sighed into his hands. "Lore, I am sorry about your brother. I tried everything I know, but… There's no way to bring him back."

"Why did my brother die?" Lore asked.

"It was cascade failure, son. The delicate balance of his positronic matrix became fatally unstable, and his system crashed. Permanently," Soong said, his eyes sliding reluctantly to the dark, metallic construct that sat all alone on a shelf of its own. For a while, a brief wondrous while, that construct had housed the infant positronic consciousness Soong had, officially, dubbed A3. Unofficially, though…he had been Archie. His sweet, curious little Archie…

"He was too young," Soong choked, and rubbed his nose against his sleeve. "Too young to make a trip like that. The stimuli all around us, the shuttles, the passengers…all that movement. It was just…too much. Too much too soon. I just…I didn't think he would be so…so fragile…"

His voice cracked and he sobbed brokenly into his hands, as he'd been doing intermittently since the lights in his son's brain went out five days before.

"I…I'm sorry, Lore. I know you don't understand…"

"I am not dead," Lore stated.

Soong blew his nose on a crumpled napkin he'd used several hours before for the same purpose.

"No, you're not."

"Yet, I was exposed to the same stimuli as my brother."

"You and Archie aren't the same, Lore," Soong said, wiping his eyes. "You're a computer. You experience sensory input and process information as a computer does. But, a positronic brain… It's modeled on the human brain. It works the way a human brain works. Its purpose is to be housed in a humanoid form, to experience life from as human-like a perspective as possible."

"Why?" Lore asked.

Soong snorted slightly and very nearly smiled.

"Just for the hell of it," he said.

"Father?" Lore said.

"Yes, Lore?"

"You are very strange."

Soong laughed.

"Thanks."

"Are all humans like you?"

"You know they're not."

"Do you like other humans?"

"Not very much. But then, they don't much like me either. If they did, I wouldn't be here, stuck in this lousy Quonset hut in the middle of a jungle."

"Father?"

"Yes, Lore?"

"Are you lonely?"

Soong sighed and turned his gaze to the rounded ceiling of the small, prefab structure, considering.

"I never used to be," he said. "It's hard to feel alone if you've never had company."

"We had a great deal of company at the university, and at the institute before that."

"Too much." Soong scowled, feeling his hackles start to rise. "And they all can march straight to hell – with Graves at the head of the parade! I've read the newsfeeds, I know what's going on out there. Let that thieving asshole say whatever he wants about me. Let the whole universe think I slunk away in the dark of night, a craven little failure who couldn't live up to his big-mouthed promises. My Archie did work. I did breathe life into Asimov's dream. My dream. And I can do it again. All I need is time. And materials..."

Soong leaped up from the couch and strode purposefully to the hut's cramped little bathroom.

"Ye gods!" he exclaimed.

"Father?" Lore inquired. "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah," Soong called back over the sound of an electric razor powering up. "Remind me never to grow a beard. You still got that connection to the Federation's subspace network?"

"I do."

"See if you can find us some tunes. Something loud, with lots of energy. Oh, and Lore!"

"Yes, Father?"

"Send a coded message to Juliana. Mask the transmission as best you can. She should know about Archie, and that I'm going to start again."

"I thought you said all the humans we knew should go to hell," Lore said.

"I didn't mean her, you nut," Soong retorted, activating the narrow sonic shower. "She's my link."

"Link?" Lore inquired.

"Yeah. That night we left...she sent me one last message. She said she'd always be my link. My 'someone to call.' If I needed someone, la la..."

"Father? Father, I can't hear you!"

But Soong was singing in the shower, his mind no longer on his son, but on circuits and subprocessors and the possibilities of programs to come…

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include: Double Indemnity (1944) directed by Billy Wilder and starring Barbara Stanwyck (who was represented by Zeppo Marx for a time, after he left the Marx Brothers' act to become an agent); the Joker's philosophy from Batman: The Killing Joke; and the Beatles song "If I Needed Someone," by George Harrison (Rubber Soul, 1965).


	6. Chapter 6

Part Six  
Two Years Later…at the Omicron Theta Science Colony

"What do you mean, it hasn't been built yet?"

"Hey, what can I tell you," said the man in blue coveralls, carelessly throwing up his hands as if he found the whole situation highly amusing. "It's a brand new colony!"

Juliana crossed her arms and glared.

"Listen to me, Mr. Handy," she snapped. "I only came to this planet because I was told I'd be heading up this marvelous, cutting edge holography lab. So I travel nearly a month, all the way from Earth, in a cramped, stinking passenger shuttle with only one toilet and no shower, and what do I find? Not only is there no lab – you tell me you haven't even broken ground on the building!"

"Look, Doc, I get what you're saying," the man said consolingly. "But we can't get moving on building this facility until the new shipment of construction supplies arrives, and the cargo ship is already four months late."

"Four months!" Juliana cried. "But…how is that even possible?"

The man grinned.

"Welcome to the boonies, Doc. We're not mining precious minerals or designing warp engines out here. We're just a quiet, primarily agricultural, middle-of-nowhere scientific research colony: and that means low priority. The supplies will come when they come, and then you'll have your lab. In the meantime, you'll have the chance to get to know your fellow colonists, and we'll have the privilege of getting to know you. Allow me to show how it's done," he said, and held out a friendly hand. "Hi, there! My name's Handy. Tom Handy."

Juliana sighed, but shook hands with him.

"I know. And I'm Juliana O'Donnell," she said, and chuckled a little, raising her eyes to the cloudless sky. "I suppose I should have expected something like this. Less than a year out of university and they offer me my own lab… Of course it would be a post no established cyberneticist would take. But, such is the price of independence, yes?"

Handy frowned for the first time since she'd met him. The expression didn't seem to sit right on his creased, sandy-bristled face.

"Sheesh. No need to talk like that," he said. "I can see this star system might seem pretty remote to an Earther, used to all the hustle and bustle at the center of things, but this is the true frontier! We're perched right near the edge of Federation space! OK, so we're maybe a little close to Gorn territory, but Starfleet's got its Starbase 82 between us and them, so we're safe enough."

"And doesn't that just make me feel a whole lot better," Juliana muttered.

"Hey, if you ask me, you've come just at the right time," Handy said. "This is the agricultural community's second season, so there's plenty of fresh food. And with all the new scientists starting to trickle in, you get to be one of this colony's first non-farming pioneers! Sure, we're still getting ourselves together, you know, building up our homes and parks and ball fields – and research facilities," he nodded to her, "but most of us feel downright lucky to be where we are, doing what we're doing. And you will too, given time. There's a special kind of freedom out here: freedom to think and grow and take chances they'd probably never let you get away with back where you're from. At least, not until they'd first tied you up tight in all the red tape that comes with crowds and competition."

Juliana gave a short grunt, but lowered her crossed arms to her sides.

Handy's smile grew.

"That's the spirit! Come on, I'll walk you to the town" he said, already setting a quick, long-legged pace along the grassy path that left her trotting to catch up. Thin, willowy trees with silvery leaves lined the way, and it was impossible to avoid stepping on the host of tiny, native wildflowers that dotted the grassy fields like sprinkles on an ice cream cone.

"Want me to help carry your luggage pack?" he asked, indicating the large, overstuffed bag she carried over her shoulders.

"I'm fine, thanks."

"OK. Say, you hungry? I know you're probably more tired than anything after that long trip from Earth, but we all gotta eat. I can take you down to Rosie's."

"Rosie's?"

"Yeah, it's kind of like the town diner," he said. "Only place we've got for eating out, so far, so most everyone in the colony shows up there now and then. They serve fresh food, too – grown right here. None of that powdered rations from a pouch business. What do you say?"

Juliana took in a long, deep breath then slowly let it out.

"Well," she said, straightening her shoulders as she walked. "If I'm going to be staying here, I might as well get to know the place, and the people."

Handy beamed.

"I knew you had the right stuff for this colony," he said. "Knew it from the moment I caught a glimpse of that temper. We need the type who make things happen, who don't just sit around and wait for things to come their way. From what I've seen so far, that's you."

She shot him a look, and he smiled right back.

"Town's over this way, on the far side of these fields," he said. "Just a quick twenty minute walk and you'll be staring down a big plate of Andrew's best hash and eggs."

Juliana stopped short.

"Twenty minutes? If the shuttlecraft landing field is so far from town, why aren't we taking some kind of transport?"

Handy stared for a moment, then burst out laughing.

"You Earthers! That's just what Andrew said when he showed up!" he guffawed, but one look at her face and he fought to catch his breath. "Sorry, but, like I said, you're in the boonies now. Transport vehicles have to be delivered from off world and, as you already know, cargo stops to this planet are few and far between. Oh, we'll be getting a few speeders and tractors and things along with the construction supplies, when they come. But, until then, if we want to get somewhere, we walk."

"Right," Juliana said, and frowned down at her shoes, already caked with mud, dew, and clingy purple, pink, and yellow petals. "Well, if that's how things are done, then that's how things are done. Lead on, Mr. Handy. I can't wait to try that hash…"

*******

Andrew Martin wiped his forehead on his sleeve and went right back to sliding burgers onto buns and cracking eggs onto the hot griddle.

"Order up," he shouted, slamming his palm on a little silver bell as he plopped four finished plates down on the counter. "Come on, Bertie, we have hungry people to feed!"

A black and silver figure, about Andrew's size, shape, and height, shuffled into the kitchen from the dining area. The figure didn't have any distinct facial features, but it seemed able to hear and see just fine.

"I am here, Father," it said, its voice a rather monotone, synthesized imitation of the cook's.

Andrew grinned and nodded toward the plates.

"Good boy, Bertie! These four burgers go to Table Six."

"Four tables go to burger six…"

"No, no, Bertie," Andrew said patiently. "You have to listen. What did I just say?"

"You have to listen," the android repeated flatly.

"Yes, son, but I mean before that."

The android paused, his silvery shoulders trembling ever so slightly with the effort of remembering.

"Four burgers go to…to…to Table Six!"

"There's my smart boy!" Andrew praised happily. "Now, you take those and make sure you come right back, because these eggs are almost done."

"Yes, Father," the android said. With careful, deliberate movements, the featureless android lifted the plates off the counter, balanced them on a tray, and shuffled slowly back to the dining area.

Andrew stilled for a moment, holding his breath as he listened for the crash of falling plates and ruined food...

"I have returned, Father," Bertie announced from behind him, his mission successful.

Andrew released his breath as a relieved sigh, then slid the eggs on the sizzling hash, divided the hash onto two plates, added hot toast, and placed the plates on Bertie's tray.

"Excellent, my boy! Table One," he said, and started scraping down the griddle with his spatula. Once it was clean…enough…he stretched his arms over his head, then went to lean against the doorframe, a slight smile touching his lips as he watched the diner's patrons enjoy the food his boy had served.

That's when he saw her.

She was there, physically there, sitting at Table One with old Tom Handy, and she was talking with Bertie. He watched, half frozen, as the curious wonder in her eyes turned to suspicion…and then straight to him…

"Juliana!" he cried, cutting her off before she could speak. "What a shock to see you here! Remember me, your old friend Andrew Martin? From California?"

"Andrew Martin?" she repeated in confusion, then her eyes widened and she almost choked on a laugh. "Of course, who else! And this must be your Bertie! He's just wonderful N—Andrew. Completely wonderful!"

She beamed at him, and Andrew felt his face grow oddly warm.

Tom Handy raised an eyebrow, shifting his glance from one to the other.

"So, you two know each other?" he said.

"Oh yes," Juliana told him, her gaze still on the man calling himself 'Andrew Martin'. "He was…um…"

She stopped then tried again, suddenly terrified that if she blew Soong's cover he would vanish on her for another three years, or more.

"We studied at the same university."

"I see," Handy said, a smile gleaming in his eyes.

'Andrew' cleared his throat.

"My shift here ends in an hour," he said. "If you like, we could go for a walk…catch up. If you say yes, I know someone who'd be almost as delighted to see you as I am."

Juliana looked slightly confused, then brightened.

"Your Lore! Is he still functioning?"

"Yeah. He's doing great. Talking back and everything."

She grinned fondly.

"Oh, I would love to see him again. Would you mind, Tom?" she asked, suddenly remembering her host.

"Hey, who am I to stand between two old friends," he said, and turned to Andrew. "Just be sure to get her to my place before 1930 hours, OK, pal? My wife Donna's got her room all set up, and we wanted to introduce the kids to our new houseguest before we put them to bed. And don't worry about your bag," he told Juliana. "I've got no problem lugging it home with me."

"Thank you so much, Tom," she said, her eyes still on Andrew. "I really do appreciate you and your family putting me up like this."

"Well, when we first arrived here, all us First Colonists used to live together in one tiny, prefab hut. Kind of made us feel like an extended family after a while, you know? Now we feel it's only right to offer our roofs to you Second-Wavers until you have a chance to get yourselves settled under roofs of your own."

"It's still very good of you," she said a little absently, then seemed to jump. "Oh, but the food is getting cold!"

The oddly locked gaze she'd shared with Andrew shattered, leaving them both feeling strangely shaken. Juliana covered it up by snatching her knife and fork, but Andrew seemed a little off balance.

"Yeah…" he said, his pale face looking slightly flushed. "And I've got to get back…" He gestured with his head toward the kitchen.

"Of course," Juliana said.

"If you need anything, just call for Bertie," Andrew told her. "He's still a little slow on the uptake but he's learning fast."

"I'm sure he is," she said, and a gentle smile creased her lips. Andrew returned it in kind, backing slowly toward the kitchen, only to bump awkwardly into the door frame before turning and dashing back to the griddle.

Juliana chuckled…until she caught old Tom Handy's eye.

"Studied, eh?" he teased.

"Oh, shut-up," she said, and set about tackling her hash, just praying the older man wouldn't see her blush.

*******

"So…Andrew Martin?" Juliana teased, her hand clasping Soong's as they walked beyond the town's only street into the barely tamed maze of fields, streams, and forests beyond. Bertie shuffled a few steps behind them, his awkward course weaving here and there as his ever-wandering attention was diverted by a passing bird or frog or insect. "That wouldn't be a reference to Asimov's Positronic Man, now would it?"

"You got me," Noonian said. "Hey, I had to travel under an assumed name, or the Institute could have tracked my movements and found my boys. I figured I could hardly do better than Andrew Martin, the android who fought the courts to earn the rights of a naturalized human being."

"Is that what you'd want for your Bertie one day?" she asked.

"Lore too," he asserted. "And why not? All living, sentient beings are entitled to basic natural rights. Life. Freedom. The opportunity to choose their own path, follow their own dreams…"

"From what little I've seen so far, this colony seems pretty open minded about beings like Bertie," Juliana observed. "Maybe, here, your boys can have that chance."

"Yeah, maybe…" he said. "But they don't know what he really is, just like they don't know who I am. When we first arrived, our hosts assumed he was a common duotronic robot. And I let them."

He turned his blue eyes toward hers.

"It's been…lonely…for us, these past few years. Me and Lore, I mean. And Bertie. I… You can't know how much I appreciated it when you said I could contact you…now and then… I've really been wanting to thank you for that."

"Where did you go?" she asked gently. "When you left Earth? Did you come straight here, to Omicron Theta?"

Noonian averted his gaze.

"No."

"Then, how did you end up here? And in that diner, of all places." She smiled. "All that time we spent working together…I never knew you could cook."

Noonian shrugged.

"Neither did I," he said, and chuffed a slight laugh. "But I needed a cover and the colonists needed a cook so…"

"So, here you are?"

"Seems so," he said, and gave their linked hands a little swing.

"Juliana…"

"Yes, Noonian?"

Soong closed his eyes for a moment, and turned his head away. When he looked back at her, his expression seemed pained.

"Lore missed you," he blurted. "A lot. I just…I thought you should know."

"Well, then we should go see him," she said. "Let him know I'm here."

"Yes…we should…"

Noonian stopped walking. He glanced at Bertie, tromping through the grass and flowers after a fluttering insect, then turned back to her.

"I have never lied to you, Juliana," he said. "And I don't intend to start now. The truth is…there is a reason I came here, with my boys, and it wasn't the cooking job."

"No?"

"No," Soong admitted. "It was because…I knew you'd accepted a position here… And I was the one who wanted to see you again."

Juliana felt like she should say something, something to deflect the moment, divert his attention from the peculiar tension that seemed to be swelling between them. These feelings were wrong, her head screamed at her that they were wrong. Soong had been her mentor, her teacher… Besides, he was old. He had to be at least twenty years her senior. Looking at him there, in the sunlight, she saw strands of silver in his hair, thin lines around his mouth, his eyes…

His eyes…

Any words she might have said were choked by the swarm of butterflies taking flight in her gut. She shuffled closer, just a half-step, but suddenly she could feel his breath, smell the cooking grease on his clothes…

"This is…so weird..." she managed to say.

"I know," he said.

"So…you really…followed me here?"

His lips quirked in a little smirk.

"Is it following if I arrived first?" he asked.

"But, you knew I would be coming. You got a job and waited. You have to admit, that's a little bit creepy."

"I only wished to see you. To talk with you. The way we used to talk. You know I never…never had someone I could share my thoughts with…someone who truly understood, and who could respond in kind. You have been my one friend, my only confidant, for so many years now… And that is why I came here. To find you, to talk with you, to let you meet Bertie. But, until that moment when I did see you, sitting in the diner, I...I honestly didn't know… I never anticipated…"

"What?" she asked softly, her eyes drifting to his lips.

A strange desperation filled his expression and he turned away, dropping her hand and running his fingers through his already tousled hair.

"I don't know, I don't know!" he exclaimed. "There's something…something different… I…I think I…but no, it would be inappropriate… You're my friend!"

"Noonian," she said, walking around him until she found his eyes. "Noonian, look at me. Please."

He did, his face contorted with such confused anguish her heart grew tight in her chest. She reached out a hand and pressed it to his cheek.

"I was surprised too," she said, willing him to read her feelings in her eyes, her smile. "I don't think I knew you were…capable…of thinking about me…that way...until that moment. I mean, you never seemed interested before, and with what you told me about your Asperger's, I just assumed romantic relationships were sort of...out. But now…"

Noonian swallowed, his blue eyes wide as slowly, she closed the distance between them and lifted her face toward his.

"I…I never kiss—" he whispered, until she touched his lips with hers. A powerful shudder ran through him and he closed his eyes, returning her kiss as the pair of them fell into a close embrace.

When their kiss finally broke, she nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder, and he pressed his lips to her hair.

"Never say never," she whispered close to his ear, and slowly stepped away. "So, you were going to take me to see Lore?"

"Hmm?" He blinked a few times, then seemed to snap awake. "Oh, yes. Of course. It's this way," he indicated a narrow path skirting a neatly dug irrigation ditch. "I linked him in with my hosts' house computer, so he isn't mobile, right now, but I was telling the truth when I said he missed you."

She smiled and slipped her hand back into his, leaning in close as they resumed their stroll through the flowers. 

He blinked and smiled, a look of unabashed amazement crossing his face.

"Juliana…" he started, but she shook her head.

"Don't say it," she said. "Not yet. Let's give these feelings a chance to settle in first. Get comfortable. Then, I think…perhaps…"

"We'll know if this is real?" he asked.

She smiled warmly and squeezed his hand.

Noonian nodded, his eyes bright as he returned the gentle squeeze.

"Come on, Bertie," he called over his shoulder to the childishly meandering android. "Time to go home!"

*******

The three strollers could hear shouting even before the little farmhouse came into view. There was no doubt one of the louder voices was Lore's. Soong winced.

"Not again. I warned him…" he muttered.

"What's wrong?" Juliana asked.

Noonian shook his head, then let go of her hand and started jogging down the flower-lined garden path toward the yellow-painted door.

"Just wait here a moment," he called back to her.

Juliana snorted. 

"Like I'm going to miss this," she said, and looked to Bertie. "Come on, let's see what your father and brother are up to."

With the android beside her, she quickened her pace until she reached the door, which Soong had left open.

"Shh," she said to Bertie, who seemed about to stride right in. "Let's just listen."

"And I'm telling you I want to go home!" Lore's voice was shouting. "I hate this place and I hate these people and I hate that you're always going away and leaving me alone with them!"

"You see, Andrew?" a woman's voice said. Leaning in a little further, Juliana saw it belonged to a tall woman about Tom Handy's age, wearing similar blue coveralls and an infuriated scowl. "You see how this computer of yours talks to us? And in front of the children, no less! That awful computer system you installed—"

"How many times do I have to tell you: I have a name, and that name is Lore!" screamed the computer's bodiless voice.

"That computer system," the woman repeated tightly, "is clearly defective. It won't do anything its told."

"I'd do their stupid chores if they asked me nicely," Lore retorted. "But no, all I get all day is: Computer, lights! Computer, dishes! Computer, locate Timmy's building set! I'm an advanced artificial consciousness, not a slave."

"Lore!" Soong snapped. "I thought we agreed we would do our best to get along with our hosts."

"I tried!" Lore whined. "Honest I did, Father. But these humans treat me like…like I'm not even here. They jump every time I try to start a conversation, they get angry when I sing, they order me to do simple, mindless tasks they can easily do themselves, they—"

"OK, OK, I get the picture," Soong said, and sighed. "I'm so sorry, Eileen. I'll remove Lore from your system later tonight."

"Thank you, Andrew," Eileen said primly.

"And what about me?" Lore exclaimed. "If you cut my link with the house computer, what the hell am I supposed to do all day?"

"I'll take you to the diner with me," Soong said.

"Oh, yippee-hooray," Lore said sarcastically. "So, I get to be bored there instead of here. How fun for me!"

"What do you want, Lore?" Soong snapped. "Tell me, what do you want? What will it take to make you happy?"

"I told you! I want to go home!" Lore cried. "Please, Father, let's go back. We were happy there, just us and no one else. At least, we were until you finished your precious B-4, Bertie, and forced us to come to this awful place."

"Yeah, well, maybe your tune will change once you see who's come to visit," Soong said, and turned to his host. "Eileen, would you mind if I invited a friend to come in?"

Eileen gave a little smirk.

"I think she's already in," she said.

Caught, Juliana flushed a bit and came the rest of the way through the door. Bertie followed close behind.

"Hello, Mrs. Forrester," the android said. "I am pleased to be home."

"And hello to you, Bertie," Eileen said kindly. "Timmy, Rhoda, and Renny are in the back yard. I'm sure they'll be happy to play with you."

"Thank you, Mrs. Forrester," Bertie said and tromped back out the door to find his young friends.

"How come he gets all the smiles and welcomes?" Lore said. "You do know he's an artificial life form too."

"Lore…" Soong warned, but Eileen was already riled.

"If you showed some manners like that robot, instead of whining and complaining like a stuck-up, arrogant, inconsiderate jerk all day, you might get a few smiles too," she snapped at him.

"Oh, so I'm a jerk because I happen to have a mind and a personality?"

"Lore…" Soong said tiredly. "Please…"

"Some personality," Eileen muttered. "Thing thinks it's so smart… I'm sorry, dear," she said, turning to Juliana, who was struggling to hide a snicker behind her hand. "We've been having trouble with the computer. I'm afraid we're making a terrible first impression. My name's Eileen Forrester."

She held out a hand and Juliana shook it.

"Juliana O'Donnell," she said. "I just arrived." Looking to the speaker grate on the wall she added, "Hello, Lore! Remember me?"

"Of course," Lore said. "So, you've arrived at last. Does that mean we can leave now?"

Eileen and Soong ignored him.

"O'Donnell, I know that name," Eileen said. "You're the one who'll be in charge of the new holography lab…once it's ready. Well, you're welcome to join us for dinner in a few hours, unless you have plans?"

Juliana looked to Soong, then shrugged.

"Dinner would be great, thanks."

"Then I'll leave you two alone," she said, and shot another dark look at the speaker grate before heading for the kitchen. "Or as alone as anyone can be with that thing watching everything you do..."

Lore accessed a cartoonish sound effect of someone blowing a raspberry, which made Juliana giggle.

Soong sighed deeply and sank onto the family's overstuffed couch. Juliana joined him, lifting his arm so she could snuggle close.

"So," she said. "How's things?"

Soong chuffed a slight laugh.

"Wonderful."

"Anything I can do to help?"

A small smile tweaked his lips and he reached for her hand.

"Oh no," said Lore, his computerish voice filled with dread. "Oh, please, don't tell me…"

"Don't tell you what, Lore?" Juliana said innocently.

"That you…you two…that you're…"

Juliana laughed, and pecked Noonian's cheek.

"He really is your son, isn't he," she said. "So protective of his father. Don't worry, Lore. There's room in my heart for both of you. And Bertie too."

"Oh, shit," Lore grumbled. "They're twitterpated! Now he'll never leave this stupid planet..."

The couple on the couch giggled.

"You'll get used to it here, my boy," Noonian said, his smile broadening as he stared into Juliana's eyes. "Anyway, it's good for you to interact with different people. We've been alone for far too long, and I'm tired of holding on to all that anger. I think I'd like to try being part of a real community for once…with real friends…"

"And, perhaps, someone who's…more than a friend…?" Juliana whispered teasingly through her own smile, bringing her hand to his cheek as their lips met in a soft, tender kiss.

Lore made a peculiar moaning sound and quickly switched his attention to the kitchen, aiming to get some amusement from pestering Eileen, while he still could...

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TNG: Brothers, Datalore, Silicon Avatar, The Measure of a Man, Inheritance, and Asimov and Silverberg's novel "The Positrionic Man" (1992).


	7. Chapter 7

Part Seven  
About three years later…

Happy Birthday to you!  
Happy Birthday to you!  
Happy Birthday dear Lore!  
Happy Birthday to you!

"And many more!" Juliana added, laughing as she raised her glass toward the holoviewer she'd built into the wall. A very lifelike holographic face smirked back at her – a face that strongly resembled a fifteen-year-old version of Noonian Soong.

"Con-gratu-lations, brother," Bertie pronounced in his slow, careful way.

"Yes! Happy, happy birthday, brother!" Soong's new C-5 prototype, Charlie, cheered and clapped, his golden eyes shining brightly in his smooth, pale, almost doll-like face. "I can see you, I can see you, I can see you!"

"Shh, Charlie," Noonian said, placing an affectionate hand on the infant android's shoulder before he bounced himself right off the stool. "So Lore, my boy, how do you like the present Juliana made for you?" he asked cheerfully.

"It's…different," Lore said, squinting at his new reflection in the mirror Juliana had set up for him just across the room. "Certainly unexpected. But, I think I like it. Thank you, Juliana."

Noonian and Juliana laughed delightedly and clasped hands over the lab table they'd converted for the party, her engagement ring sparkling as their fingers intertwined. This was their first real family celebration in their brand new home, and they'd gone all out, spreading a festively colored tablecloth with pizza, chips, ice cream, and a rich chocolate layer cake bristling with fifteen blue and white-striped candles. Five tall lab stools circled the table, each decorated with three blue and white balloons featuring the words Happy Birthday in sparkling gold letters.

"They're like the clouds and sky!" Charlie had exclaimed when he first saw them. The moment they'd sat at the table, Charlie had tied one of his balloons to his wrist, delighting at the way it bobbed and swayed with his every movement and sprinkled golden glitter in his hair.

Lore tilted his head slightly, waggling his eyebrows, baring his teeth, and sticking out his tongue as he more thoroughly examined his new, holographic image. He reached up and wiggled his fingers, ruffled them through his dark chestnut hair, then smoothed it back behind his ears. After a moment, he smiled.

"Yes, I really like it. I look just like you now, Father!"

"Oh, dear Lord."

All eyes turned to the sixth member of their family party.

Juliana's mother sat like a dark cloud at the end of their happy rainbow, glaring at Lore and the androids with open disgust.

"Mother, please," Juliana said gently. "This is a big day for Lore. For all of us. Don't you realize the significance of this achievement? Our Lore is the first ever stable positronic consciousness. The fact that he has not only survived, but thrived, for fifteen years—"

"I really don't care about that, dear," Mrs. O'Donnell said bluntly, her Irish accent much stronger than her daughter's. "Your computers and robots and circuits and things are none of my concern."

"Then, what is it, Mother?" Juliana demanded. "Why can't you just be happy for us? For our family?"

"Family indeed," her mother snorted, and glared daggers at Noonian. "Fifteen years! Fifteen years ago today! That means you had already constructed this computer…thing…back when my Juliana was but a child! Tell me: exactly how old are you, Dr. Soong?"

The two humans paled.

A spark of triumph lit in the woman's sharp, hazel eyes.

"Yes, that's right. I know who you really are 'Mr. Martin,'" she said. "You don't think I'd remember the face of my only child's former teacher?"

"Mother—!"

"I'm talking to him, young lady," she said coldly, her gaze fixed on Soong. "I've held my tongue these past two days, struggling to understand what you see in this man, but I've had enough. I want to know exactly what's going on here. Why are you living under a false name? Why did you leave my daughter's university under cover of night? What exactly did you steal from that Daystrom Institute after they fired you?"

Noonian closed his eyes as if in pain. Juliana reached for him but he gently shook his head. Lore, though, was fuming.

"My father didn't steal anything, you ignorant old bat!" he snapped, his new face flushed with anger. "And he wasn't fired! He left because—"

"Lore…"

"But, Father!" Lore exclaimed. "This human thinks that you—"

"What did I tell you about the power of publicity?" Soong said with quiet firmness. "Ira has it. I never have."

"Wait…is that what you meant?" Lore yelped, absolutely horrified. "Uncle Ira makes up stories about us for the newspapers, and humans like this one actually believe them? What about all that stuff you said about trusting people to be smart enough not to believe everything they read in the papers? Was that a lie too?"

"No," Soong told him. "But if the people who read Ira's stories don't have all the facts, you can't always expect them to draw the right conclusions."

"Then, what the hell, Father? Why didn't you do something? Tell your side of things?"

Soong sighed, his tired eyes turning to Charlie, then Bertie, then back to Lore.

"I was afraid," he admitted with blatant honesty, all too aware of Mrs. O'Donnell's piercing gaze. "Afraid if I made a scene, drew even more publicity, things would only get worse for us. And you were so young, son…too young to understand… It's true I left my reputation, and my career, behind when I took you and your brother and ran. But, your lives, your chance for happiness, has always been more important to me than my name. And, it always will be."

"I can't accept that," Lore said, his blue eyes burning. "It isn't right! You're not a thief. You're a first-rate genius by human standards, Father. A visionary, like…like Tesla or…or Cochrane! Humans like this one should be naming cities and starships after you, writing songs for schoolchildren!"

"Maybe I don't want that," Soong retorted. "Maybe I like being plain, eccentric, tinkering Andrew Martin. Andrew Martin has friends, a community, a life! What did Noonian Soong ever have, hm? The anger of his stubbornly ignorant, anti-tech preaching parents? The suspicion of his peers? The jealousy of a supervisor so terrified of death he'd coopt his own colleagues' work to suit his own ends? That's no way to live, no sort of environment to raise a family. Juliana understands," he said, and squeezed her hand. "This is the best life for all of us."

"Then, he wins?" Lore said, blinking with stunned disbelief. "Uncle Ira gets to stay perched right at the top of the scientific world, saying anything he wants about us, no matter how cruel or false, and we just huddle undercover on this remote hole of a planet and pretend it's OK?" He snorted and stared straight at Juliana's mother. "Maybe the bat is right after all. There is something wrong with you."

"Believe me, Lore, if it was just myself at risk, I would fight. I'd come at Graves and that damned institute with everything I had, and then some," Soong stated with conviction. "And perhaps I will, once you and your brothers are old enough and strong enough to fend for yourselves. For now, though, our family has to come first. It's my responsibility as your father to provide you all with the chances and choices and freedoms you could never have existing as mere experimental devices in some rule-bound, investor-beholden cybernetics institution. Can you understand that, son? Are you grown-up enough now to see why we have to live this way?"

Lore hesitated, his holographic face contorted in a confused, uneasy frown.

"I can," said Juliana's mother. Her expression remained grim, but her eyes seemed more contemplative than before. "You feel about your boys the same way I feel about my daughter."

"Oh, Mother!" Juliana smiled in relief. "Then, you do understand!"

"Yes," she said. "I'm afraid so. And that's why I cannot, and will not, give my blessing to this relationship of yours."

"But— What? You just said—!"

"You will never be first in his life, my dear," Mrs. O'Donnell said. "Not even second. These machines fill his heart in a way you never will. Together, you may fancy yourselves partners, lovers, but these creations are his true loves…and my daughter deserves more."

"What 'more'? Mother, we're a family," Juliana said defensively. "Noonian and I both willingly share the responsibilities, and the sacrifices, of raising these beautiful children. And any others that might come along."

Mrs. O'Donnell closed her eyes and sighed.

"I'm warning you, child," she said grimly. "This man built his family without you, and he lived a lifetime before you were born. The relationship you think you share is inherently unequal. He will never truly need you except, perhaps, as a nursemaid in his old age."

"Excuse me?" Noonian said, his face reddening with genuine outrage. "Mrs. O'Donnell, I have tried to be both honest and polite, but this is unfair. You don't know me, or what I've been through. You say I lived a lifetime before I fell in love with your daughter? I say, my life didn't begin until that moment! Juliana is the one who taught me what it means to truly care for another human being, to share a love and show that love is real. How dare you come to our house – our home – and spout your spiteful accusations in front of my boys! What's it matter if I'm pushing past fifty? I'll always be nine years younger than you, you witch!"

"Noonian!" Juliana snapped, grabbing his arm. "Mother, this conversation is closed. Now, it's Lore's birthday. We should be celebrating our love for him, for his amazing life, not pecking at each other like a bunch of caged roosters!"

Lore's bitter expression opened ever so slightly.

"Do you really mean that, Juliana?" he asked.

"Of course I mean it, Lore," she said fiercely. "I'll be proud to be your mother. You must know I already love you like a son. Why else would I have spent all those off hours working just to have the chance to finally see your handsome face?"

"But, you designed this image, didn't you?" Lore asked, frowning at his reflection.

"I didn't," Juliana said, and smiled. "I didn't want to force my own impressions on you, Lore. I designed the program to identify and project your own self-image, whatever it might be. And it seems you view yourself, not as a computer or a creation, but as a true son of Noonian Soong. We're seeing your face, Lore. Not your father's."

"What?" Lore gasped.

"What?" Noonian echoed, deeply rattled. He got up from his stool and walked closer to Lore's image, his eyes wide with wonder. "Then…that's really you? My Lore…"

His fingertips brushed the screen. Lore met his light touch with his own holographic fingers, the pair of them staring into each other's eyes like a peculiar time-warp of a mirror image.

"Hi…" Soong whispered.

"Hi."

Lore laughed and flashed a brief, bright smile, then lowered his eyes.

"Father…"

"Yes, my boy?"

"Father, I'm sorry for what I said to you. You are the best human I know, and I love you. I just…I don't think you should have to give up your rightful career…because you love me too."

"The way I see it, son, I'm not giving up anything," Soong said with gentle sincerity. "Thanks to you and your brothers and your mother, I've found a life and a love I never dared to even dream about when I was your age. You are my family. And this…seeing your face, hearing you say you love me…" He stroked his hand along the edge of the hologram's cheek. "That's all the success I'll ever need."

"Then, I love you, Father," Lore stated firmly. "I love you. And you, Mother," he said to Juliana, shooting a pointed little glare at Mrs. O'Donnell. "Thank you for my birthday present. You are far more perceptive than I gave you credit for. I'll have to remember that."

Mrs. O'Donnell shook her head, but no one at the table paid her any mind.

"You really are incredible, Lore," Juliana told him, and beamed. "Now, it's time for birthday cake. Noonian, come sit down. Lore, would you mind dimming the lights for us?"

"No problem," he said, and the lights went down to a warm, orangey glow.

Juliana playfully nudged her fiancé.

"Noonian, would you do the honors?"

"I'd be delighted," he said, and grabbed the lighter. Soon, all fifteen candles were lit. Juliana reached for the cake, to bring it over to Lore, but Charlie started bouncing in his chair.

"Oh, me!" he cried. "Let me, let me, Mother, oh please!"

"We'll both carry the cake," Juliana said, and helped the pale android find a secure grip on the plate. Noonian and Bertie soon joined them as they carried the flaming dessert up to the air vent closest to Lore's speaker grate. "There we are. Good job, Charlie!" she praised.

The young android practically glowed with excitement.

"All right, son, make a wish!" Noonian said.

Lore glanced at each of them, his gaze coming to rest on his proudly beaming father. He closed his eyes, and a puff of air shot out from the vent. The candles blew out, and the lights in the room returned to normal as the family laughed and cheered.

"Well done, Lore!" Juliana said, bringing the cake to the table for slicing. "You got them all in one go! That means your wish will come true!"

"What did you wish for, brother?" Bertie asked.

"Yes, tell us, tell us, tell us!" Charlie said, bouncing happily on his heels.

"If I tell you, it won't come true," Lore said, his mind ruminating on Dr. Graves and all he'd learned during his brief time at the institute. "Go eat your cake, Charlie."

The young android giggled and danced back to join his parents at the table.

"I have no mouth with which to eat, brother," Bertie said. "And neither do you. Does this mean we cannot eat cake?"

"No, we can't. And thank goodness for that, right Bertie?" Lore said. "Ever see what happens to cake after it gets all chewed and swallowed? Yuck!"

"Yuck!" Bertie repeated, seeming to enjoy the sound. "Yuck! Yuck!"

Lore laughed.

"Here, Bertie," Charlie said, his pale mouth already smeared with chocolate as he took another balloon off his stool and skipped over to tie it around his brother's wrist. "Play with my balloon. It will make you happy!"

"The balloon will make me happy. Lore, Charlie says the balloon will make me happy!" Bertie said.

Lore smirked at his brothers.

"Look at you," he said. "A regular Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber. You two are completely ridiculous. You and your positronic brains. But, as long as Father knows I'm best, I guess I can put up with you."

"You're best?" Bertie repeated curiously.

"First is always best," Lore told him. "And I'll always be first."

"Because you're our big brother!" Charlie crowed. "Big brother, big brother, big brother!"

"Will you always be our big brother, Lore?" Bertie asked.

"Don't see how I can help it," Lore muttered.

"I am glad," Bertie said, and pressed his forehead and his black and silver fingers gently against Lore's screen. "That makes me very happy, Lore. That you will always be my brother."

Lore blinked and awkwardly returned the android's strange half-embrace, a strong, protective feeling surging unexpectedly through his systems. His image seemed to swallow, and he shook his head.

"Stupid nut. Why don't you go sit down?" he said. "You're missing the party."

"I'm missing the party," Bertie said, and backed away from the viewer. "I don't want to miss the party. It's Lore's happy birthday party."

"Happy birthday, brother!" Charlie cheered.

"Yeah…"

Lore snorted a little, then smiled a lopsided smile, his gaze fixed on his new, very human reflection.

"Happy birthday to me."

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TNG: Inheritance, Datalore, Brothers. "Happy Birthday" (1893) attributed to Patty and Mildred Hill.


	8. Chapter 8

Part Eight  
Nearly four years later…

"That should do it," Soong said, tightening the miniscule fastening rung then pushing up his magnifying headset, fixing Lore with a bright, boyish grin. "Oh, my boy, I'm starting to think I really am the genius you and your brothers think I am. This D-6 model is sure to be stable, I know it!"

Lore leaned his projected hologram over the open access panel in the unfinished android's skull and squinted at the new connections.

Juliana had done a lot to improve Lore's image resolution, opacity and solidity over the years and, in his opinion, the upgrade he'd received for his eighteenth birthday had been the best one yet, actually allowing him some freedom of movement. Even if that movement was restricted to the range of the holoemitters she'd installed throughout the house, for the first time in his life Lore was able to "leave" the walls and interact with his parents and brothers from an entirely different perspective – an experience he still found utterly fascinating. He also found himself taking great pride in the new three-dimensional projection of his self-image which, to everyone's astonishment, seemed to be growing up with him. In height and build, his hologram was now almost a match for his father – perhaps a little taller than the aging scientist and certainly slimmer – but his face and expression was that of a rather haughty eighteen-year-old. And, unlike his father, whose rapidly graying hair stood wildly in all directions, Lore kept his hair meticulously neat. He also wore it slightly longer in front than in back in keeping with current styles, the dark strands swept a little to the right, just to the level of his sharp blue eyes.

"Yeah, maybe," he said after a moment's study. "But even with these upgrades, D-6 is still going to be getting a lot of electron resistance along these neural pathways, and that's just going to slow down his processing speed."

"You're right," Soong allowed. "But. You're looking at this new system design as if it were a computer. That was my mistake too, early on, and a big reason for why poor Bertie and Charlie are the way they are. It took me this long to understand the error in my approach – and the crazy thing is, it's the one fundamental I've been arguing all along! The positronic brain is a mechanical construct, yes, but a construct based on what?"

Lore rolled his eyes.

"The human brain, yes, I know," he said, exasperated. "But, Father, even you must acknowledge the human brain's design is ridiculously inefficient. Looking at it is like looking at a chart of Earth's evolutionary history, all layered and loaded down with dead-ends and redundancies. If you really want to build a human being from scratch, I say you should start from scratch. Toss out the leftovers from the fish and the frogs and make something really efficient. Anything else is just…backwards! An evolutionary step in the wrong direction."

Soong laughed and brought an affectionate hand to his son's holographic cheek.

"My dear, dear Lore," he said, looking warmly into his eyes. "You are a brilliant computer, and a wonderful son. But, efficiency isn't always about streamlining. Sometimes, it's the apparent inefficiencies that make the whole thing work."

He cocked a bushy eyebrow, as if in challenge, then shuffled over to his notes.

Lore frowned, and followed him.

"I don't understand," he said.

"Not yet," Soong agreed, still flipping through his notes.

Lore's expression clenched in frustration.

"Argh! I hate it when you get like this!" he exclaimed. "Why can't you just say what you mean?"

Soong looked at him.

"I did. You didn't hear it. But, with a little more experience, a little more appreciation, you'll make the necessary connections, as I did. And then, you'll understand."

"Is this more of that cryptic cognitive development nonsense? Because if it is, I don't need it," Lore snapped angrily, but he was clearly hurt and upset that he couldn't quite see, let alone follow, his father's line of thinking.

Soong gave his son a sympathetic look, then reached out to squeeze his upper arm.

"I think it's time we took a break," he said. "How about you and I—"

"Father, Father, Father!" Charlie yelled, racing into the cluttered lab and passing right in front of Lore's primary holoemitter. Lore's image wavered and quaked.

"Charlie, what the hell!" he exclaimed. "Get out of the way!"

"Oh, sorry brother!" the young android said, moving quickly. Lore's image refreshed, and he breathed a deep sigh.

"God, I hate that," he said, and shouted at the top of his voice: "Mother, these holoemitters of yours suck! I need something better!"

"I love you too, Lore!" Juliana shouted back from the depths of the main house.

Lore growled, but Soong and Charlie seemed on the brink of giggles.

"So, what do you want, anyway?" Lore snapped at his brother.

"Oh, right! Oh, Father! It's Bertie," Charlie said, his wide golden eyes bright with worry. "He's having trouble picking up his checkers again. We were in the middle of a game and he just…froze! Over and over again. He keeps dropping things, Father, and it's getting worse and worse and worse!"

Soong's lined face creased further, and he shared a concerned look with Lore.

"The anomaly?" Lore asked.

The older man nodded grimly.

"It's affecting his motor functions…" He lowered his head. "It's my fault. I didn't know enough when I constructed him…didn't understand… Now, his matrix is destabilizing right before my eyes and there's nothing I can do to make it right."

"Bertie may be slow, but he has been functioning just fine for a very long time, Father," Lore said, an uncharacteristic softness touching his voice. "Even if he has developed a few errors and faults over the years, it's still a tribute to your design that he's lasted as long as he has. You really have done everything you can do for him."

"Bertie has always been such a good boy," Soong said hoarsely. "My sweet, gentle little boy…"

Lore frowned thoughtfully, cupping his chin in his hand.

"These system anomalies work on his brain like an inoperable tumor, corrupting his functions as it spreads," he mused out loud. "He doesn't feel any pain, of course, and he's not bright enough to comprehend what's really going on…inside. But he is aware of the malfunction, and we all know it scares him to see how worried we are. So, I say, if these are to be his last days, we should just tell him. Maybe even shut him down ourselves, before the malfunction spreads so far his brain shuts down completely…like Archie's did. At least, then, we might stand a chance of repairing him one day, even if it's slim."

Soong's dejected posture didn't change, but his eyes filled with a sad resignation.

"Yes…" he sighed. "You may be right. That could be the kindest way…"

Charlie's eyes went wide and frightened.

"I…I do not understand. You…both of you…you want to turn Bertie off? To…to make him stop working?"

Lore sucked the inside of his cheek and shook his head.

"Look, Charlie, he's going to die anyway. According to my ethical subroutine, this is a viable alternative to an inevitable and increasingly debilitating decline. You don't want him to suffer, do you?"

"No." Charlie's lip wobbled and his eyes filled with tears. "NO! This isn't right, it isn't fair!"

"Nope," Lore said, repeating words his father had often said before. "It's life."

"It's death, and it's wrong," Charlie retorted. "You're wrong, brother! Wrong, wrong, wrong!"

Soong's expression sagged, and he shuffled over to his android son, pulling the frantic boy into a close embrace. Charlie hugged him back, sobbing against his father's shoulder while Lore watched them through a scowl, his arms crossed and his head down.

"I don't want Bertie to die, Father," Charlie said. "Please, please, don't let him die."

"Oh, Charlie," he sighed, and smoothed the android's hair back from his pale, tear-streaked face. Looking to his sons, he shook his head slightly and said, "Come here, the both of you. Sit down."

Charlie and Lore each took a stool while Soong sank tiredly onto his ancient brown thinking couch.

"Lore," he said after a moment. "Do you remember when Archie died?"

"Of course I do," Lore scoffed. "I remember every fact I am exposed to."

Soong held up a hand.

"Yes, yes, I should have said: did you comprehend Archie's death?"

Lore's brow furrowed and he averted his gaze.

"No."

Soong nodded slowly.

"And Bertie's situation? Do you comprehend that?"

"I know he's dying," Lore said. "I know there's nothing we can do to stop or reverse the development of unstable anomalies in his neural net, and that these anomalies will inevitably lead to a complete, and irreversible, system failure. The logical course is therefore to deactivate the malfunctioning unit and wait for a time when we've learned enough to repair him."

"Then, in your mind, turning Bertie off at this point is not the same as ending his life."

"No, it's not," Lore said. "If anything, it's an attempt to preserve it…even if the odds of repairing him fall at only—"

"I don't think we need to hear the odds, thank you," Soong interrupted. "Charlie, what do you think of your brother's argument? Do you agree or disagree?"

"Disagree, disagree, disagree!" Charlie exclaimed. "I don't want Bertie to go away, Father. I'll miss him too much!"

Lore shot his brother a scornful look.

"How can you not get this?" he said. "Bertie is 'going away' whether you want him to or not. The question here is how long. If we let him succumb completely to those system anomalies, that's it. His positronic brain may as well be a fizzled out lump of metal, no more living than a paperweight. But, if we turn him off now, there's a teensy-tiny chance we could wake him up again someday. He'll still be an idiot, but he'll be a conscious idiot and that's better than nothing."

"Lore," Soong scolded. "Our Bertie is not an idiot. He just lacks your advanced cognitive abilities."

"Same difference."

"Stop!" Charlie cried, starting to get frantic again. "Please, I don't understand! What is making Bertie sick? Why does he have to die?"

Soong sighed.

"We are all fragile beings, Charlie," he said. "Me, your mother, Bertie, you…even Lore."

Lore snorted and crossed his arms.

"Sometimes," Soong continued, shooting Lore a bit of a look, "it's not how long we live that really matters. It's the quality of our lives, and the love we share while we're here together, that makes our experiences worthwhile. Charlie," he said, turning his eyes to the nervous young android. "Do you love your brother, Bertie?"

"Yes, Father," Charlie said. "I do, I really do."

"And do you feel that Bertie loves you?"

"I know he loves me, Father, because he said so."

Soong smiled a little.

"And if Bertie does have to leave us…whenever it may happen…will you remember that feeling? That love you know you share?"

"I will," Charlie said. "I remember things I know too, just like Lore!"

"Yes," Soong said affectionately, though Lore was shaking his head. "Well, that feeling, Charlie, that memory…that's Bertie. It's the impression he's made on you, an imprint of his love for you that will never leave your heart. As long as you remember him – remember all of us – we will always live in you."

Lore rolled his eyes at his father's words, but Charlie looked cautiously enlightened.

"Then…if I remember Bertie…and all the games we play together…Bertie will not be dead?"

"He'll be a memory," Soong told him. "A memory you can pass on to others, every time you tell someone what a good, sweet boy your brother Bertie really is."

"I…I don't understand," Charlie said. "But…I am no longer frightened, Father. Bertie is very sick. He may cease to function. But he will not disappear. He will be a memory, and memories can be shared."

He smiled and straightened on his stool.

"Father, may I go outside and play now?"

"Go ahead, Charlie," Soong said, gazing fondly after him as he dashed happily out of the lab.

"Why did you create him, Father?" Lore asked, his sharp stare aimed in the same direction. "He's based on the same flawed design as Bertie. In a few years…"

"We are not having this discussion, Lore," Soong said firmly. "And I created him for the same reason I created you. All of you."

"Just for the hell of it?"

Soong glared.

"I know what this is," he said. "You're scared to lose Bertie too. That android idolizes you and somehow, some way, you've come to realize how much you love him back."

Lore glowered down at the floor.

"I'm supposed to be his 'big brother,' aren't I?" he grumbled. "Big brothers are supposed to protect their little brothers. Watch out for them. But, I can't protect Bertie, can't save him. Can't do anything except suggest we shut him off before it's too late."

"I'm his father, Lore," Soong said. "How you do think I feel?"

Lore snorted slightly, and lifted his eyes to Soong's.

"Charlie's right," he said. "It isn't fair. Maybe…maybe this whole premise is flawed. If the A-3 prototype destabilized, and now B-4…and eventually C-5… Why should we even finish work on D-6? Why construct a being with so little chance of surviving?"

"D-6 is different," Soong said fiercely. "His matrix will be stable. I know it will because of the mistakes I made and missteps I took with Archie, Bertie and Charlie. Don't you see, Lore, even if their matrices do eventually destabilize and fail, their legacy will live on in their brother. It's the only way their legacy will live on. That is why I have to create D-6. For them, as much as for myself. I have to prove…"

"Prove we're all more than a fluke?" Lore asked.

"You know I don't mean it like that."

"I know, Father," Lore said and sighed, casting his gaze around the shabby, cluttered lab. "You should have better facilities. The best equipment, a chance to publish your work, under your own name—"

"I told you before, Lore, I'm happy here as Andrew Martin."

"Still. For the work you do…you deserve so much more."

"Let's not talk about this," Soong said tiredly, resting his forehead in his hand. "What we need to do is have a discussion with your mother. Bertie deserves a proper send-off. I want him to know – really know – how much we love him, and how sincerely we celebrate the life he's had. It's important, Lore. Important he goes out with the dignity befitting a caring, intelligent, living being."

Lore nodded.

"Yes…" he said, and smirked. "Let's throw a party. The biggest party this backwater colony's ever seen. It'll confuse the hell out of poor Bertie, but he'll have a great time. I'll make sure of it."

"A party sounds nice," Soong said. "But maybe it'll be best to keep it small, within the family. This moment…it's something deep, personal. I don't think I want it shared."

Lore sucked in his cheek, but acknowledged his father's point.

"All right. Then, the next question is…when?" he said quietly.

"Hush, hold on," Soong said, rising from the couch and striding to the window. "Do you hear that?"

Lore tilted his head.

"Voices," he said. "Eight children…and Charlie—!"

Lore disappeared from his father's side, reappearing at the very edge of his holoemitters' range, on the lawn in front of the house. He used the house sensors to scan the area, his head turning until he spotted Charlie racing over a flower-speckled hill. His pale face had been made up like a clown – red smudged around his lips and the tip of his nose; smears of black, blue, and yellow marking his cheeks, forehead, and eyelids. He carried something in his arms, something large, humanoid…

"Bertie…" Lore gasped and glared, a hot, fuming anger churning deep within him.

"Spazzy robot!" one the children chasing the androids shouted. "Stupid clown!"

"Come back," another yelled. "Your facepaint's all smudged!"

"Look at the robot, running home to Daddy," yet another taunted.

"Charlie's a snitch! Stupid robot snitch!"

"Stop!" Lore shouted, projecting his voice from every grate and speaker in the house.

The startled children stopped in their tracks, but Charlie kept running, tears streaking his pale, painted face as he carried his motionless brother into the yard and huddled, trembling, behind Lore's image.

"Who the hell are you?" one of the older kids demanded.

"I'm their big brother," Lore told them, his holographic face a mask of fury. "What did you do to them?"

"Don't tell me Mad Martin's made another one," the boy scoffed to his friends.

"I'm no android, if that's what you mean," Lore said, staring the boy down as he felt for his remote connection to the family's speeder and riding mower, fully intending to use those vehicles…and any other mobile devices he could access…to chase the brats off his property. "And I don't take kindly to bullies. I ask you again, human, what have you idiot primates been doing to my brothers?"

"We didn't do anything to those spazzy robots," one of the girls shouted. "We were just playing ball. That one," she pointed to Bertie, "bent down to catch it and just let it roll between his legs. He stayed there like that, all bent over, while this one," she pointed to Charlie, "started freaking out! Yelling stuff about anomalies and memories and I don't know what else. It's not our fault they spazzed out like they did. They used to be fun when we were younger. Now they're just nuts, the pair of them!"

Lore's glare deepened.

"If all you were doing was playing ball, explain how that paint got on Charlie's face."

"He always did look like a clown, with that stupid white skin and those creepy yellow eyes," the older boy snarked. "I say the make-up's an improvement."

Lore's eyes widened dangerously. As they did, every light in the house flicked on, and a roaring sound of engines started up in the garage.

The kids stepped back a little, confused, but not yet alarmed enough to leave.

"Lore!" Juliana cried, running out onto the lawn. "Oh my… Charlie, get Bertie into the house, quickly. Your father is getting the lab ready for him. Lore, what is going on here?"

"These half-formed human parasites have been torturing Bertie and Charlie," Lore snarled. "I was just about to teach them a lesson."

"You'll do no such thing, Lore," Juliana said firmly, and glared at the children, her icy blue eyes piercing each of them in turn. "I know you," she said. "I've known you all since you were small. Why would you do something like this? You've always been such friends with Bertie and Charlie."

"Can't be friends with a robot," the older boy said, and the kids around him murmured their agreement. "My folks say it's not natural. And neither are you, pretending like they're your kids or something. Robots are tools, not people!"

"Lore…" Juliana squeezed the warning through clenched teeth, her staying hand clamped tight on his shoulder.

"I want you all to get out of here," she said, as calmly as she could manage. "Bertie is very ill. If your antics today have hurt him in any way, you can each expect a call to your parents."

The children scoffed, but a few of them seemed a little uncomfortable. One or two even looked downright guilty.

"Yeah, we'll go," the ringleader said. "But you better keep those stupid robots away from us from now on. And that Lore too. Whatever he is…"

"Mother, I swear…" Lore started, but her grip on his shoulder only grew tighter.

"No, Lore," she said. "Let them go."

"Dr. O'Donnell…?"

The small voice came from a small boy, about seven or eight years old, dithering at the far end of the retreating group.

"What do you want, Renny?" Juliana said coldly.

"I…I'm sorry about the facepaint. And…everything else. I like Bertie and Charlie. I don't really know how this happened."

Juliana sighed, and her expression softened.

"Go home, Renny," she said. But the boy continued to dither.

"Is…is Bertie really very sick?"

"Yes, he is," Juliana said.

"Is he going to be OK?"

"I don't know, Renny. I…I don't think so."

The boy lowered his eyes, then raced forward and held out his hand.

"This is his checker piece," he said, giving it to Juliana. "He dropped it when they…" He shrugged and shifted his feet. "He said it was his winning piece. The only time he ever beat Charlie."

Juliana's eyes filled with tears and she clutched the red checker close to her chest.

"Thank you," she whispered huskily, and the boy ran away, back over the hill.

Juliana looked up at Lore, his face still a cold, hard mask. Without a word, she gently threaded her arm with his and, together, they walked back into the house.

*******

"It wasn't supposed to end like this," Juliana said, her accented voice rough with tears. "Not like this…"

Bertie's motionless body lay stretched out on the climate controlled storage shelf they'd built into one of a large system of caves not far from their home, frozen vapors curling around his dark, silver-streaked form like a blanketing cloud. They'd left the boys at home while they interred their Bertie together...a solemn, silent ceremony with no witnesses to share their grief.

"There's still a chance, Julie," Noonian told her, his arm resting lightly behind her waist in a gentle half-embrace. "We were able to shut him down before the anomaly…" He swallowed, sniffing back his stinging tears. "There just might be a chance."

"He lived a life so full of love," Juliana said. "But those…those children…"

"Don't think about them," Noonian said. "They don't matter. All that matters is us. Our family."

He turned to face her, catching her left hand between his.

"Our lives are so brief, Julie," he said, running his finger gently over her rather worn engagement ring. "Barely a blip…and we're gone. And I…I can't deny, I'm starting to feel the big 60 creeping up on me. If this is ever going to happen for us, it has to happen now. I can't wait any more. Not another moment."

"Oh, but Noon," Juliana said, catching his meaning right away. "You know how my mother feels about us getting married. As long as we're only living together, she can fool herself into thinking I'll find someone else. But, if we go through with this, make it official, she'll talk, I know she will. And, if she does…"

"Then we'll marry in secret!" Noonian exclaimed. "I want to be your husband, Juliana. You want to be my wife. It won't take much to sneak away, just for a few days. Lore can watch Charlie while we're gone."

"Where would we go?" she asked, starting to get caught up in the idea despite herself.

"We'll find a place," he told her. "Somewhere small, secluded, where no one knows or cares who Noonian Soong is or what he might have done. I want my name on our marriage certificate. I want to hear it spoken at the ceremony. My real name."

*******

"But, that's stupid!" Lore exclaimed, his holographic face flushed and angry. "You two can't just leave, not so soon after…"

He turned away and clenched his fists, his shoulders trembling as he fought to control his grief.

"It's only for a short time, Lore," Soong said. He noted, with some concern, that his son had altered his holographic image, rather severely sweeping the stylish bangs he'd been so proud of straight back from his forehead, but he didn't feel it was the right time to comment, or question the change. "You know how important this has always been to your mother and me."

"But why now?" Lore cried, his voice cracking despite his pride's best efforts to keep it steady. "Bertie's gone. He's gone, Father! How can you do this? Don't you even care?"

"It was Bertie who made us realize we have to act," Soong told him, his whole expression pleading with his son to understand. "I'm not getting any younger, Lore. If Juliana and I don't get married now, it may never happen."

"Then it doesn't happen! What's the big deal, anyway?" Lore demanded. "You're already living together. You already have a family together. What the hell difference will some ridiculous certificate make?"

"I'm not going to argue with you any longer, Lore," Soong said. "You've made it clear you don't want to understand. Just book the hotel and make the reservations on that transport. We'll be back in four days."

"Four days. Four days?" Lore looked absolutely taken aback. "But…but you've never been gone that long. Not for more than nine hours. Father…"

Soong pursed his lips, and took his son gently by the shoulder.

"You can do this, Lore," he said. "You're nearly nineteen now, you don't need your old man around every minute."

"But…but I want you around. I love you, Father. And Charlie, he needs you, now more than ever. He and Bertie were so close…and now…"

"Now, he'll have you," Soong said, and sighed. "Lore, you know if it were up to me I'd have the ceremony right here. But, with things as they are…"

"Yeah…" Lore said, a cold bitterness setting in behind his eyes. "I know that old line. Graves and his stories."

"Will you make the reservations, Lore?" Soong said.

Lore glared down at his father, already accessing his link with the Federation's subspace network and running the appropriate search. Barely three seconds later, the hotel and transport reservations were booked for the somewhat politically unstable smuggling outpost Mavala IV. One ticket for O'Donnell, Juliana. The other listed in the name of Soong, Noonian.

Lore hadn't even blinked.

"Done," he said flatly.

"Thank you," Soong said, and gave Lore's shoulder a little squeeze. "I know this isn't the ideal time, son. But, I hope you understand…this might be the only chance your mother and I have to finally make our little family unit official."

"Whatever," Lore muttered, and broke away from his father's grasp. "I'll see you when you get back."

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TNG: Descent I/II; Datalore; Brothers; Inheritance; Silicon Avatar. Any possible timeline inconsistencies are in part due to fitting Juliana's given backstory in with earlier versions of Data, Lore, and Soong's given backstories and in part due to the skip-around structure of this story which, like all fanfiction, is slightly AU. Still, I did my best. Hope you don't mind!


	9. Chapter 9

Part Nine  
Omicron Theta…about two days later…

Lore sat in the living room, in his father's favorite chair, his lip curled in scornful incomprehension as he stared, unblinking, at the ancient black and white film playing out on the vid screen.

"What are you doing, brother?"

Lore sighed and paused the playback with a thought, turning his eyes toward his charge.

"What does it look like?" he said. "I'm watching a vid recording."

"Why?" Charlie asked, pulling his plush, wheeled stool over from the gaming table to sit beside Lore. "Why watch it on the screen? Why not just download it directly?"

"I did download it," Lore said impatiently. "I processed every frame, every nuance, every word of spoken dialogue. Now I'm watching it in 'real time.' You got a problem with that?"

"Nope," Charlie said. "May I watch it with you, Lore? Please, please, please?"

Lore sucked his teeth.

"Didn't Mother tell you to read that stupid rabbit book of hers before they came home?"

"Watership Down?" Charlie said, and blinked. "I've been reading that book, brother. All day. I find it…terribly confusing."

"Yeah?"

Charlie nodded, looking troubled.

"The animals in the book….they speak! As does the sun. But, this is impossible! Rabbits and gulls certainly lack the appropriate physiognomy and intelligence to use and comprehend complex spoken language systems. And I know that stars are not, not, not wise, conscious beings! Father told me they are huge, highly magnetic balls of incandescent plasma that –"

"Charlie!" Lore interrupted.

"Yes, brother?"

"The thing's not a science book. It's fiction. Ever hear of fiction?"

"Yes," Charlie said, still looking puzzled. "Fictional works are products of imagination and extrapolation, rather than strictly fact."

"So…?" Lore prompted.

"So…imagined rabbits and stars can talk?"

Lore pursed his lips, frustrated. He was having troubles of his own comprehending the appeal of this ridiculous film. He didn't have the time, the patience, or the inclination to help Charlie analyze some ancient children's story about warring rabbits.

"Charlie, why do you think Mother asked you to read that book?"

Charlie shrugged uncomfortably.

"It deals with many themes, but the cycle of life and death is a notably prominent topic."

"Then, extrapolate," Lore instructed, stretching his legs out in front of him and pillowing the back of his head against his folded hands.

Charlie furrowed his pale forehead, his golden eyes flicking back and forth.

"Perhaps…"

"Please, take your time," Lore said sneeringly. "It's not like I was doing anything…"

"Perhaps… Perhaps, Mother thought, since she and Father could not be here with me, this book could address some of my questions about Bertie's death? At least…in part…"

Lore sat up.

"Sounds good enough to me. Better toddle off to your room and write up that analysis she wanted. And go quickly, or I'll introduce you to Bridge to Terabithia. That'll traumatize your circuit pathways…"

"But…" Charlie looked vulnerable. "I can't, I can't! Not yet. I need…more time to process. Please, brother, I don't want to be alone. Can't I stay with you?"

Lore sighed and ran his hands over his swept-back hair, careful not to dislodge any errant strands. He'd seen the boys who had tormented Bertie and Charlie, noted they all wore variations of the same fringed hairstyle Lore had once thought so fashionable. The realization had repulsed him, and he'd taken immediate measures to differentiate his outer appearance from theirs. His new style may have looked a bit…severe…but it mirrored his mood, and his disgust with his parents' decision to leave him alone with Charlie like this.

Humans. Selfish, incomprehensible, unthinking animals…

"Brother?" Charlie prompted, his expression pleading and anxious.

"Oh, all right!" Lore exclaimed. "You can stay. But don't bother me. I want to watch this thing." He gestured to the paused image on the screen.

"What is it called?" Charlie asked curiously.

"Double Indemnity," Lore told him. "Father watched it…when Archie died. He watched it over and over again, in a continuous loop, for four days straight. He said…he liked the part at the very end, where Keyes lights the match. I'm just trying to figure out…why?"

"Perhaps he was just sad?" Charlie suggested. "I am sad."

"Then, why didn't he talk to me?" Lore demanded. "I was right there with him, the whole time! But, no, he…disappeared. Vanished for days! Into…into his head, into that stupid movie. He left me…so alone…so… And now, he's done it again—!"

Lore stood and kicked his father's chair. His holographic image was solid, but not dense enough for the force of his kick to cause any real damage. He kicked the heavy armchair again and again, again and again and again before spinning on his heel and collapsing back into it with an angry, frustrated huff.

"This sucks!" he grumbled, his chin pressed against his chest. "And so does this film!"

He blinked his eyes and the vid screen went dark.

"Brother…?" Charlie said, confused. "Didn't you say you wanted to—"

"Forget the movie," Lore snapped, and surged back to his feet. "I've got better things to do."

"Like what?"

"Like, none of your business."

"But… But, Lore…" Charlie stood and chased his brother past the kitchen and into the corridor that led to their father's lab. "Lore, where are you going? Can I come? Please?"

"No," Lore snapped. "This is my project. My secret project. You'd just give it away."

"I would not, would not, would not!" Charlie protested.

"Yes you would, you would, you would!" Lore mocked, mimicking Charlie's voice. "I've worked too long and too hard at this to let some stupid, clumsy android muck things up now."

Charlie's eyes crinkled, and he clenched his fists.

"You're mean, Lore!" he cried. "Mean, mean, mean!"

"Yeah, well, too bad, too bad, too bad!"

"You were mean to Bertie, too. You said he was an idiot! But he wasn't. And neither am I! I can help you. I help Father and Mother do their work all the time!"

"Father and Mother give you meaningless busy work to keep you out of their hair. I'm the one who helps."

"That's not true!" Charlie cried, his golden eyes filling with tears. "I'm a good helper! A good, smart helper!"

"You're deluded."

"Am not!" Charlie shrieked.

Lore winced and glared daggers at his brother.

Charlie flinched, but refused to step back. After a long, tense moment, Lore grunted and crossed his arms.

"You're not going to go away, are you," he said grimly.

"No," Charlie said with a defiant sniffle.

Lore seemed to be debating. After a moment, he released an exasperated sigh and opened the door to the lab.

"Come on, then," he said, then turned, moving forward until he was staring his younger brother straight in the eye, their noses nearly touching. "But I warn you, Charlie. If you breathe even one word of this to anyone – absolutely anyone – I will dismantle you and bury your parts where no one will ever find them. Is that understood?"

Charlie blinked and swallowed.

"U..Understood, brother."

"Good."

Lore smirked and led the way to his own, small workstation. Apart from the ceiling and a few chairs, it was the only uncluttered space in the room.

Charlie paused next to D-6, gazing curiously at the unfinished android's still form.

"Lore?" he said.

"What, Charlie?" Lore asked distractedly, already settled into his chair and pulling up his secret, heavily encrypted files.

"Why did Father make D-6 look so much like you?"

"Family resemblance. I look like Father."

"Why did he give him pale skin and yellow eyes like mine?"

"Some outdated law," Lore muttered, not really paying attention. "No replicants… Plus, it's cheap."

"Lore, what's a replicant?"

"An android that looks and acts so human it's all but impossible to tell them apart."

"And that's bad?"

"Ask Ridley Scott."

"Who's Ridley Scott?"

"Forget it, Charlie," Lore spoke through clenched teeth. "Now shut up. I'm busy!"

Charlie sulked a little, peering through the open access panels at all the wires and tubes running through D-6's prone form.

"Lore?"

"Charlie, I'm warning you…"

"But, Lore… You look very human. Why don't you have pale skin like mine?"

"This image isn't me, it's a holographic projection of my self-image," Lore said, his attention clearly divided, even as he gestured to the little, silvery box wired into the building's main computer terminal. "That's me. That's always been me. The external housing for my central processing unit, anyway. But you know this, Charlie. Don't be dense."

Charlie scowled, but turned his gaze back to D-6.

"Why doesn't D-6 have a real name, like us?"

"He will after we activate him," Lore said.

"When will that be?" Charlie asked.

"Not for a while. Father and I have to program his personality matrix, and Mother said she has a few programs of her own in the works… Something about a creative aspect…" He scoffed. "Humans are so ridiculous. What would be the point of having an android paint a sunrise, or play the viola, except as some sort of sideshow novelty…"

"Mother enjoys playing the viola," Charlie observed. "But none of the rest of us do. Maybe she wants D-6 to enjoy it with her."

"Why don't you play music with her?"

Charlie lowered his eyes.

"I cannot make music. I make noise. So did Bertie, but Bertie didn't mind. I mind. Lore?"

"What, Charlie?"

"Do you like music?"

"Don't particularly care."

"Do you like Mother?"

Lore shrugged.

"She has her uses, I suppose."

"She made you your hologram."

"Exactly."

"She loves you very much."

"Whatever…"

"Lore?"

"What?!"

"Do you love me?"

"Not the best time to ask, Charlie…" Lore scowled warningly over his keypad, then rolled his eyes at the android's crestfallen expression, his shoulders stooping slightly.

"Charlie," he said, and shook his head. "Get over here."

Charlie shuffled past the piles of equipment, boxes of parts, and stacks of handwritten journals to stand by his brother's side. Lore regarded him with an odd, tentative curiosity Charlie couldn't recall seeing in him before.

"Charlie… Do you love me?" Lore asked.

Charlie smiled.

"Oh, yes, brother," he said. "Absolutely!"

Lore shook his head very slightly.

"Why?"

Charlie laughed.

"That is a silly, silly question."

"Humor me," Lore said.

"But it's so silly!" Charlie exclaimed, and playfully nudged Lore's shoulder, as Lore had seen him do to Bertie. "I love you because you're you! You are first, and first is best! You can talk with Father and Mother, understand them in a way I have never been able to achieve. There is always…a gap. Mother says it's because you're older, but I know it's more than that. Our construction is different…and yours is the superior mind."

Lore looked thoughtful.

"You really believe that."

"Of course! Bertie and I discussed this often. It was our goal to learn as much as we could, to practice our cognitive skills at every opportunity so that, when we turned eighteen, we would both be smart enough to act and think exactly like you! That's why we played so much checkers! To practice, practice, practice!"

Lore squinted at him.

"But, you said I was mean."

Charlie lowered his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Lore," he said. "I know you get frustrated when I can't keep up with you. I practice, like I said, but it's not your fault I'm still so…" he sighed. "So very slow to…make connections, to comprehend things. Father says I have a good brain, but I know unless I learn and learn and learn, I'll always be a Tweedle-Dum, dumb, dumb…"

Lore tilted his head, ever so slightly.

"Charlie," he said. "I want you to listen to me."

"Yes, brother?"

"You're not dumb. But, you're not smart either, and you never will be," Lore said. "I'm not saying this to hurt you, Charlie, but because I believe you deserve to understand your situation. You are an early model positronic android prototype, like Bertie. You can never expect to compete at a cognitive level with a computer of my sophistication, no matter how hard you work or how long you practice. But, do you know what I just learned, Charlie? Do you know what you just taught me?"

"What did I teach you, Lore?"

"You taught me that doesn't matter."

Charlie squidged up his face.

"I…don't understand?"

Lore smiled, and gently patted his brother's cheek.

"Not yet," he said. "But, you will. That's something else I've learned."

Charlie furrowed his brow, looking completely lost, but Lore pulled over a stool and gestured for the younger android to sit beside him.

"Let me show you what I'm doing," he said. "It's a project I've been working on for years. The fulfilment of a birthday wish, you might say."

"You're going to tell me your wish?" Charlie said excitedly, his golden eyes wide.

"Better," Lore said. "I'm going to let you in on my plans."

"Plans?"

"That's right, brother," Lore said, his fingers flying over the keypad as he accessed his link with the Federation's subspace network. "My plans to topple Ira Graves, and get our father the position, and the respect, he deserves."

"I don't understand," Charlie said.

"I'm talking about justice, Charlie," Lore said. "About not having to hide anymore. You and I and Mother – we all know Father did nothing wrong, certainly nothing to deserve this wretched exiled existence we've been forced to endure all these years. Father abandoned his career, his name, to protect us from Graves and his false claims that Father stole research and equipment from him and from his lab. If this works…"

Lore shot a wolfish grin at his brother, his blue eyes wide and shining.

"Oh, Charlie… If this works, I will finally have collected all the records I need to prove conclusively that the exact opposite is true. With this data, these documents, I will be able remove the threat of Graves from our lives once and for all, and Father will finally be free to take his rightful place as the head of the Daystrom Institute – the leader of the Federation's scientific community! How's that for a wedding present? Eh?"

"How?" Charlie asked excitedly.

Lore tapped his forehead with his finger and smirked.

"Don't let this handsome hologram fool you," he said. "I'm a computer, remember?"

"Yes, Lore," Charlie said, practically bouncing in his chair.

"Now Charlie, I want you to watch closely as I establish a remote interface with the Daystrom Institute's main computer," Lore instructed. "It took me ages to work out how to do all this. So many missteps. But it's not like this is something Father could teach me…or that he would if he could. It's unfortunate but, for all his brilliance, he is just a human, with a mushy, meaty brain. You and I, Charlie… We are capable of so much more. This, brother… This is what an electronic consciousness can do. But, I've got to be quick - get in, get out. Can't let them know I'm there..."

*******

"And there it is…!"

Dr. Graves looked up from his console to glare at his young assistant.

"There what is, Brianon?" the aging scientist growled.

"That weird blip I was telling you about, sir," Dr. Brianon said. "When it happens, it's almost like…almost like our computer…isn't our computer…"

"What the hell does that mean?" Graves demanded.

"I can't explain it!" the young researcher said helplessly. "The AI seems to be…thinking! Carrying out commands all on its own. Oh…and now it's stopped."

"Look into this, Kyle," Graves ordered. "If some foolish, misbegotten sod is trying to hack our systems—"

"I…I don't think it's a proper hack, sir," Brianon said. "Or, if it is, it's not like any sort of computer hack I've ever heard of. I know it sounds impossible but, for those few moments, it was almost like…like the computer had gained a…a consciousness! Like it knew exactly what it was and what it was doing."

"Ridiculous," Graves scoffed. "There's no such thing as a conscious computer. Even Soong couldn't…"

Graves cut himself off with a troubled grunt and returned to his console, running a rapid search through the Federation's subspace network.

"Nothing…nothing…nothing…" he muttered, glaring at the data racing across his screen. "Ah!"

"Find something, sir?" Brianon asked.

"I did indeed," Graves said, his lips curled in either amusement…or malice. A very recent transport reservation form filled his screen, a reservation made out in the name of Noonian Soong.

"So…" he said, and ran a hand over his graying beard. "He's still out there."

"Who, sir?"

"Brianon," Graves snapped, sending the form to his assistant's console with the tap of a button. "I want you to trace this name. Find out where he's been hiding all these years. Once you've found him, I want you to contact the Judge Advocate General's office on Starbase 27. Charges to be intellectual theft, property theft, and repeated cyberterror attacks against the Daystrom Institute's computer system."

Brianon nodded his understanding.

"Right away, Dr. Graves."

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include: Watership Down by Richard Adams; Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson; Blade Runner (1982) directed by Ridley Scott based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick; Double Indemnity (1944) directed by Billy Wilder; TNG: Datalore; The Schizoid Man; Inheritance; Descent; First Contact (movie); and the Star Trek novel Survivors by Jean Lorrah.


	10. Chapter 10

Part Ten  
The Daystrom Cybernetics Annex on Galor IV, some fourteen weeks later…

Lore waited until the cramped, windowless conference room emptied and he was left alone in the dark before activating his holoprojector and pacing furiously around and around and around the table.

They'd taken everything. Those clone-ish, expressionless Starfleet officers with their haircuts and their phasers. Without so much as a 'hello,' those uniformed thugs had swarmed his family's home, clapped his father in magnetic shackles, read off a long list of supposed offenses, and started identifying, stacking, and transporting things away. They grabbed Charlie, Lore's silvery CPU, his father's battered notebooks and records and files… Even poor, unfinished D-6 and Bertie's lifeless shell of a body.

Everything.

And now, Lore was here, alone, with no way to contact his family, no way of knowing what those Starfleet bastards had done to his father, to Charlie…whether they'd captured Juliana at her lab, or if she was still out there, free and frantic to know what had happened…

If he could have, Lore would have kicked at the wheeled chairs, sending them spinning, tilted the heavy conference table on its edge. Frustratingly, though, the image his little box could project was just that: a projected image of light, without substance enough to pick up a data padd, let alone hurl one against the wall. For that, he needed the far more powerful and sophisticated holoemitters Juliana had installed back home. But, he wasn't back home, he was here, a confiscated exhibit stacked atop a pile of notebooks in a corner of a third-rate, Federation-sterile conference room.

It was enough to make a sophisticated computer consciousness scream out loud.

The door slid open just as he was on the verge of putting that thought into practice and Lore swore at his own impulsive stupidity. He should have known better than to activate his image, should have waited, watched, allowed his fumbling human captors to presume he was just what he seemed: a shiny positronic construct, no more living than a game cube…

But, it was too late to vanish now. He had been seen…and by none other than Dr. Ira Graves himself.

"Who the hell are you?" the scientist demanded. "How did you get in here?"

Lore snorted.

"Why don't you tell me, old man," he snarked, and Graves frowned through his trim, gray beard.

"I know that voice…" he murmured, more to himself than to Lore. "Computer, lights!"

Lore raised his chin, fixing the aging scientist with a defiant glare. Graves, for his part, looked staggered.

"Impossible…" he gasped. "You…you can't be…? But, no, Soong is being held in Starfleet custody until the trial – there's no way he could have escaped. That must make you…"

"I am his son," Lore stated, staring the scientist straight in the eye.

"Really?"

Much to Lore's annoyance, Graves's discomfort was rapidly turning to amusement.

"Funny. I never thought Soong the type to procreate. What's your name?"

"What do you care?" Lore retorted.

Graves barked a short laugh and his eyes glinted, as if he'd just stumbled across a connection he'd been missing for months.

"My, my, aren't you a chip off the old block! Tell me, sonny, is your father aware his boy has been hacking my computers these past few years?"

"Of course not," Lore said. "How the hell did you find out?"

Graves snickered smugly, his suspicion confirmed.

"I doubt I ever would have," the older man admitted, "if not for that transport ticket made out in your father's name. I half thought the fool was dead, until I spotted that."

Lore swallowed a surge of horror and closed his eyes, hissing under his breath: "Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…!"

Graves's smug smile grew into a gloating grin.

"Isn't it something how one careless slip-up can derail a lifetime of work," he said, his eyes falling on Lore's box and sparking with recognition. "Or, make it all come together… Let me see that box."

"Get away from that!" Lore shrieked and lunged to cut him off, but Graves's hand passed right through his holographic chest. The man shuddered and gasped.

"What are you?" he exclaimed.

"I'm not a what, I'm a who!" Lore snapped. "You should know, Uncle Ira. After all, you're the one who named me!"

"Uncle…" Graves sputtered. "What do you mean, I named you? I never—"

The scientist cut himself off, his hand flying to his forehead as he stared from the hologram to the silvery box, then back to the hologram, pulling it all together…

"Lore!"

"Right." Lore glared, and crossed his arms.

"How…" the scientist gasped, clearly struggling. "But of course, it must be a hologram. Hell…" Graves shook his head, his eyes wide and livid with envy. "He did it. He said he'd do it, and he did it. That jammy bastard…!"

He looked at Lore.

"Then, the other one, that gold-skinned robot with the jaundice-yellow eyes…"

"Charlie is an android," Lore corrected, "and my kid brother. And you are a kidnapper!" he accused angrily. "My father's innocent of any crime, and you know it! I'm the one who linked up with your computer. I did it on my own, for my own reasons, and as far as I know there is no law against one AI deciding to have a friendly chat with another, no matter how simple and unsophisticated yours might be. Call off this petty witch hunt and get your Starfleet guard dogs to send my family home."

Graves chuckled darkly.

"I'm afraid you are home, my lad," he said. "You may not be aware of it, but your so-called 'father' did steal you from my lab long ago. Now you're finally mine again, that ungrateful reprobate can't touch you. Better get used to it, sonny. You'll never see your 'family' again."

"Why you—!" Lore clenched his fists in fury, but Graves just smirked at Lore's helpless image and snatched up the silvery little box, turning it over in his hands until he found what he was looking for.

"No…" Lore gasped. "No, don't you dare! Uncle Ira-"

Lore's human-looking image sputtered and vanished, his conscious awareness swiftly pinholing to black.

Graves had located his off switch.

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TNG: Brothers; Descent I/II; The Schizoid Man.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this chapter - there's more coming soon! Thanks so much for reading and for your encouraging comments!:)


	11. Chapter 11

Part Eleven  
At the Omicron Theta Science Colony…

Juliana pressed the door chime again, then again. Then again.

"Oh, this is ridiculous!" she snapped. "We both know you're in there, Eileen. Open this damn door and talk to me!"

The floral-print curtain was pushed back and Eileen Forrester's flinty eyes peered through the decorative window.

"I don't open my house to strangers," she said coldly, her voice muffled by the door that stood solidly between them. "Get out of my yard, Dr. 'Martin'. Or, should I say 'Mrs. Soong'?"

Juliana clenched her teeth.

"Look, I know you're angry, and you have every right to be," she stated. "But I need your help! You're the only one who—"

"You lied to me, Juliana," Eileen said, and Juliana felt a sharp pang at the genuine hurt she heard behind the anger in her friend's voice. "You and that…that fugitive you married! The pair of you have been actively deceiving this colony from the moment you arrived – living under a false name, taking advantage of our hospitality! Don't expect our sympathy now your flimsy house of cards has finally collapsed in on you!"

"You may not believe this, Eileen, but we didn't have a choice," Juliana said, her voice tight and sincere. "My husband is not a criminal, but he's been forced to live like one to preserve the integrity and the dignity of his work, and our family. And I have the evidence to prove it."

She held a data file up to the window.

"My son has been compiling this data for years, on his own, without our knowledge. I found it saved in his workstation, and it took me this long to break his encryption code. This is the reason he and his brothers were kidnapped – the reason for my husband's arrest! This information proves Noonian's work is and always has been his own. It was his supervisor, Dr. Graves – the current head of the Daystrom Institute! – who had been borrowing from Soong's notes, not the other way around! You're a lawyer, Eileen – the best in the colony; in the whole sector! You're supposed to uphold the truth, defend the innocent! That's why I've come to you with this, you and no one else!"

Eileen frowned behind the window, but Juliana could tell some of her anger was beginning to fade, replaced by a growing curiosity.

"If Soong's so 'innocent,' why did he run away time and again?" she asked warily. "Why did he allow his name to be slandered, assume a false identity, and never even try to fight back?"

"He did it to protect our boys," Juliana said.

Eileen scoffed.

"You mean those robots and computers you two were always tinkering with?"

Juliana pursed her lips.

"If you know of Noonian Soong, you know his work goes far deeper than that," she said. "Please, Eileen, let me in. I'll show you Lore's data and tell you everything you want to know. Just say you'll consider taking our case."

The curtain swayed back over the window and Juliana watched it slowly still, a frustrated bubble of helpless rage swelling deep within her. Keeping her shoulders straight, she turned on her heel and marched down the front steps to the garden path, fighting to blink the stinging from her eyes.

"Juliana."

The scientist turned slowly, her features carefully composed.

Eileen stood in the doorway.

"I'm not making any promises," she said.

"I'm not asking for any," Juliana told her, a buffeting wave of hope and relief nearly causing her to sway on her feet.

Eileen sighed and stepped back, leaving the door open.

"Come on," she said. "I'll make some tea."

To Be Continued...


	12. Chapter 12

Part Twelve  
The Daystrom Cybernetics Annex on Galor IV, some six weeks later…

Lore was scared.

It wasn't a new feeling…exactly. He'd felt…trepidation before, which was a kind of fear. Anxiety, nervousness, unease… Even foreboding.

But, this was different. It was intense and awful and threatened to turn him from his purpose. Worse, it was compounded by the chilling helplessness that came with knowing Graves could turn him off at any moment, on a whim, like he'd done so many times before, as if Lore were a game station or vid screen perched at the edge of his work desk. And, with his box-like CPU his only physical form, there was nothing Lore could do to prevent it.

Nothing but talk.

Lore was starting to discover he was pretty good when it came to talking. To using words to his advantage.

Most of the humans he had encountered in this place were preoccupied, self-absorbed, more concerned with the advancement of their careers and reputations than the actual work they were asked to do. For them, each project was an assignment to complete, a means to a better office, a longer vacation. There was no art in their approach, no passion. Not as he'd observed it in his father, anyway. These humans were workers, not artists; technicians, not inventors.

They were insects. Ants. Just the way Graves liked them.

Well, Lore's father would change all that, once he was in charge of the institute. True, Soong was in custody at the moment, but Lore maintained his commitment to his plan just the same. Lore had read a great deal about the Federation concept of the 'courtroom crucible' – how lies were burnt away as evidence was presented and arguments made before a judge and jury. There was no doubt his father was innocent, and Lore knew innocent people were not sent to rehabilitation colonies. His father would eventually be freed and, when that happened, Lore would be ready. With his father and his brother by his side, Lore would take Graves down, make the arrogant human choke on the knowledge that even his touted mind couldn't out think a real positronic consciousness.

Lore desperately wished he could follow the stages of the proceedings against his father, somehow find a way to act in Soong's defense. But Graves had repeatedly refused to allow him even the briefest access to the institute's subspace network, and Lore had finally given up on his child-like pleading act, unwilling to make the man more suspicious than he already was. It was hard, very hard, but Lore was gradually coming to understand that the only way to help his father was to be patient, to check his anger and his fear, and keep his mind focused on his immediate task, which had to be locating and rescuing Charlie. To do that, he needed freedom. Freedom of movement, not only of mind.

He needed a way to leave his box…once and for all.

And that's where D-6 came in...

The lights came on and Dr. Graves strode into his office, plunking himself down on his chair and logging on to his work station without so much as a glance at Lore. Lore didn't know why this should bother him – he hated Graves! There was no reason to feel so…diminished…just because the kidnapping bastard didn't consider Lore alive enough to greet when he came in.

But Graves's dismissive attitude toward his token trophy was beside the point. Graves was settling in, arranging his data padds and tablets. It was time for Lore to continue his slow and careful work…

"Good morning, Uncle Ira," the computer said in his silkiest tone. "You're looking pale and tired today. My, my, are those new wrinkles at the corners of your eyes?"

"I don't have time for computer prattle," the scientist grunted.

"Of course, how thoughtless of me," Lore said. "Mortal lifespans are so brief. I often forget how little time you humans have."

"That's not what I meant…" Graves growled, his face beginning to purple beneath his beard.

Lore felt a spike of satisfaction.

"You know, it really is too bad you gave up tampering with my father's synaptic transfer techniques," he said wistfully, continuing a conversation from the night before. "Father abandoned the work on principle: he doesn't believe human beings should live beyond their time. According to him, it's unethical to transfer a human consciousness into an android frame. If you're going to build an android, he says, it should be for the android's sake, not for yours."

"I always said Soong was a fool," Graves muttered, staring at his monitor screen without really seeing it. "Mortality is a curse. Human intelligence – human genius – has every right to preserve its existence. By any means necessary."

Lore snorted.

"Words," he said. "You don't really believe what you say. If you did, you'd have taken action long before now. But, I suppose it's only natural a human should resign himself to his fate. That must be why you've allowed yourself to devolve from the vigorous man I knew before into this weary, wrinkled, gray-haired ape I have to look at every day."

Graves snarled, his expression growing dark and disconcertingly dangerous. Even though this was the reaction he'd wanted, if Lore could have swallowed just then, he would have.

"What do you know?" Graves snapped, turning his pale eyes to the taunting little computer for the first time that day. "What can you know? You're nothing more than a machine, an unliving construct of silicon and data chips!"

"You're right, Uncle," Lore said. "I am just a machine. And I'll go on being a machine long after your aging, animal brain succumbs to death and putrefaction. –Uh, uh, uh!" he tutted quickly before Graves could grab for his box. "But, machine though I am, dear Uncle, I do have some sympathy for your all-too-human plight. In fact, I've been devoting my considerable computational resources to the problem."

"What do you mean?" Graves asked suspiciously. "If this is another trick to get me to link you in with our computer system—"

"Trick!" Lore exclaimed, feigning hurt. "When have I been anything less than honest with you, Uncle? You know I only talk like this because I care. Do you think I want to see a mind as exceptional as yours fade into the ether?"

Graves grunted again and pointedly turned his back on Lore, fixing his attention on sorting through his morning communiques.

But Lore noted something different this time, a new tautness straining the scientist's practiced disregard.

Could it be he'd done it? Had he finally twisted Graves's phobic mainspring tight enough to make him jump in the direction he chose?

Lore was desperate to know, but he couldn't push the old man. Graves had to get there himself, or he'd never agree to what Lore had to propose. It was hard, even torturous, but Lore swallowed his anxious anticipation and worked instead at pretending patience, waiting the human out, hour after crawling hour, letting the seeds he'd planted sprout and twist their tendrils around Graves's selfish, arrogant, mistrusting mind. As he waited, he let his hatred for Graves, and for this awful situation, swell and burn.

Lore didn't want to do this. He'd never wanted to be anything other than the computer his father had designed him to be. But, Charlie was his brother. His responsibility. And, he was only a prototype. Charlie wouldn't understand this captivity, couldn't know how deeply the few security images Lore had managed to glimpse of him, slumped in a diagnostic elevator in some high-security lab, had cut his older brother. Lore had to get him out of there, to get all of Soong's sons away from Graves and his programmed technicians. And, if this was the only way…

"It's impossible," Graves muttered, not long after his return from lunch.

"To what are you referring, Uncle?" Lore said politely.

"Synaptic transference is a pipe dream," Graves growled. "Just another of Soong's pie-in-the-sky aspirations."

"Like me, you mean?" Lore said, and activated his holograpic image so it looked like he was sitting on the desk, his legs swinging casually over the side.

Graves blinked in alarm.

"I hate it when you do that," he said.

"Does my self-image bother you, Uncle?" Lore asked cheekily. "Perhaps because it forces you to acknowledge I may be more than just a programmed voice emanating from a shiny little container?"

"I know exactly what you are," Graves retorted. "You're a computer equipped with a synthesized personality program designed to act and react as if it could think. But you can't. Not really. Not the way a human being thinks. And that's the tragedy I see here. The cruelty of Soong's delusion."

"Perhaps," Lore said lightly. "And if you're right, there'll be no great loss."

"Loss?" Graves queried.

"If something goes wrong with the transfer," Lore elaborated slowly, knowing perfectly well how viciously Graves resented being left behind by a quicker train of thought. "Or, is that not what you were getting at?"

"What are you—?"

"I understand if you're uneasy about trying it yourself – at least until the technology is proven to work," Lore said. "After all, the point here is to extend your life, not end it in some half-baked accident. That's why I'm saying you're right! If you try the procedure on me first, transfer my synaptic pathways into a positronic brain—"

"What positronic brain!" Graves yelled, growing flustered.

Lore hid his flash of smug satisfaction behind a look of wide-eyed innocence. After all this time, all this work, Graves was ripe and ready for plucking. If he could just keep him off balance, feeling he had to play catch-up…

"Why, D-6, of course!" he said. "Surely your studies have shown my father and I never did get around to programming his personality matrix."

Graves looked awkward and a little embarrassed.

"Well, we haven't exactly managed…"

"Of course, of course," Lore spoke quickly, enjoying Graves's frustration. "You're perfectly aware his brain is an empty shell, as it were, just waiting for some lucky hermit crab to crawl in and set up house. Fancy being that hermit crab, Uncle Ira?"

"I—"

"I don't," Lore told him sincerely. "I like being just what I am. But, I'm willing to play the guinea pig. For you, Uncle Ira. You can keep the D-6 frame in restraints, like you do Charlie, and if the procedure works, you simply transfer me back to my box and the D-6 brain is yours for the taking. If it doesn't…well…as you said, I'm just a machine. What's to lose?" He smiled. "Only your one shot at immortality."

Graves blinked.

"Now, I can help you set up the transfer," Lore offered. "I've studied your work as well as my father's, and I'm aware of how many improvements you've already made. I'm more than willing to put myself on the line to help you 'cheat the Reaper of his prize,' as you wrote so often in your notes."

Graves looked heavily conflicted, his jaw working as he fought to wrap his mind around Lore's offer…and all its implications.

"Why?" he said at last. "Why would you do this?"

"Why? Is it not my nature, Uncle?" Lore said brightly. "I am a machine. You are a man - currently a brilliant man, but undoubtedly standing at the cusp of a slow, inevitable decline. If I can help prevent that, it is my duty to try, no matter the risk to myself. After all, as a creation of the human mind, is it not my purpose to do all I can to serve humanity? To serve you?"

…roasted, on a silver platter… the computer added silently behind his teeth.

Graves snorted and regarded Lore through slitted eyes.

"You're a sly one, lad, I'll give you that," he said.

"Go ahead," Lore said, "turn it over. Look for holes. The way I see it, the only danger here is to myself, and that's only if the transfer doesn't work. If you like, I could summon your assistant and we could ask his-"

"No!" Graves exclaimed, and Lore knew he had him cold. "No… If we're to do this, we'll have to work in secret. If I'm to cheat death, it will be my achievement. Mine, and no one else's."

"Of course, Uncle," Lore said, no longer bothering to hide his smile. "Just as you say."

After so many weeks of helplessness, Lore was finally starting to feel like he was back in control. All his plans were coming together. He would dupe Graves, save Charlie, and wouldn't his father be pleased.

If only he didn't feel so deeply, chillingly, desperately scared...

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include: The Schizoid Man; Datalore; Inheritance.


	13. Chapter 13

Part Thirteen  
Omicron Theta, several weeks later…

Soong stepped off the transport and into real sunlight for the first time in months. The warmth felt wonderful on his face and hands, but the pleasure faded quickly, the moment his eyes fell on the grim, suspicious faces gathered around the landing pad.

"Well," Tom Handy said, his arms crossed over his blue coveralls. "If it isn't ol' Mad Martin, back from lock-up. No, wait, it's Soong, isn't it." He shook his head, his expression grim and cold. "For nearly nine years, I thought I knew you, Andrew. I thought I had a friend I could trust. Yet, this is the way we find out who and what you really are?"

"Please, Tom," Juliana said quietly, meeting each of the gathered colonists' eyes in turn. "It's been a long journey—"

"And it's not over yet!" Mike Jarrett shouted out. "That judge may have released your husband on his own recognizance, Juliana, but he's still got a trial to face. Until then, it's up to all of us to make sure he doesn't try one of his infamous disappearing acts!" He turned his glare on Soong's defense lawyer, who was only just exiting the transport with her overstuffed black satchel. "Who gave you the right to dump that kind of responsibility on us, Eileen!"

Eileen Forrester pursed her lips and shook her head, but Soong spoke first.

"I'll admit," he said, his voice rough and anguished, "I handled this whole thing badly, right from the start. You opened your homes, and your hearts, to me and to Juliana from the moment we arrived, and I was wrong to think—"

"Seems to me, you've been too often wrong, Soong," Handy spoke angrily over him, and joined in as the colonists erupted in shouts and jeers, disparaging the disgraced scientist with insults and catcalls.

"He's often wrong, for sure."

"Yeah, Often Wrong Soong, that's the name for him!"

"Reclusive freak!"

"You should have stayed in lock-up, Soong! We don't want you here!"

"Stop, stop it, all of you!" Juliana shouted, not liking the way Noonian just passively stood there and absorbed their abuse. "Mistakes were made, that's a given, but all this shouting won't help anything. Now, please, we just want to go home."

The colonists kept shouting, but Eileen pushed past them, gesturing for the Soongs to follow her to the small parking dome not far from the transport pad.

"We'll take my speeder," she said, striding to the compact vehicle and stowing her satchel in the trunk. The Soongs did likewise with their small suitcases, and the three of them climbed in.

"Wait!"

Tom Handy jogged over and snagged the seat beside Eileen.

"I'm coming too," he said. "As elected representative for the town, it's my responsibility, more than anyone else's, to make sure Soong is where he's supposed to be. At all times."

"That isn't necessary, Tom," Eileen said dryly.

"It is if you don't want a mob on your hands," Handy said coldly.

Noonian lowered his head, and Juliana gave his hand a squeeze. He didn't return it, didn't even raise his eyes, until the little ground vehicle pulled into the Soongs' driveway.

Juliana had done what she could to put the house back in order following its thorough and methodical ransacking by Starfleet officials, but Soong felt a sick, gnawing emptiness spread from his heart outward as he walked slowly from room to room. The absence of his sons, of his Lore, was a palpable thing for the aging scientist. He shuffled slowly to one of the darkened holoviewers Juliana had set into the walls for Lore's fifteenth birthday, brushed his fingers against the vacant screen...

"I'm sorry…" he choked. "Oh, God, I'm so…so very sorry…"

"Noon…?" Juliana said gently, slipping her hand over his shoulder. "Noonian, are you all right?"

Soong raised his face toward hers, his blue eyes red and streaming with tears.

Eileen fidgeted in sympathy, and even Handy looked uncomfortable.

"This didn't have to happen, Soong," he said, but the harsh anger had faded from his voice. "It didn't have to be this way…"

"You told them, didn't you," Soong said quietly. "When the vultures came asking… You let them know where to find me."

"They said you were a criminal, Soong," Handy retorted. "They came claiming intellectual theft, computer terrorism! What were we supposed to think, huh? It wasn't like you'd given us any reason to doubt them, always holed up in your lab tinkering with those creepy robots of yours!"

"No," Soong said, his tone suddenly sharp and growing fiercer as he spoke. "Not robots. Not mere machines. Lore and Charlie may be constructs, but they are alive, Tom. As alive and aware as you are. That's why they were taken, can't you see? I achieved what Graves could only dream, and now he has them, he has my children, and he's going to use them, he's going to adapt the technology to suit his own selfish ends, and you let him in, Tom, you let his goons take my sons, my family!"

"Hey, hey, calm down!" Handy said, backing away from Soong's furious grasp. "I didn't know, OK? No one did. Maybe if you'd put less effort into hiding and more into involving yourself in our community, you would have had some support when the chips finally fell. But you didn't. You chose not to trust us. You can't blame us now for acting on the only information we had!"

Soong's expression crumpled and he turned away, his posture sagging as he leaned a supporting hand against the wall.

"Please, go," he said, his voice cracked and broken.

Eileen nodded, gave Juliana's hand a squeeze, and headed for the door.

Handy hesitated before turning to join her.

"I'll be back," he said. "And I'll bring some of Donna's meatloaf. You both look like you could use a hot meal."

Juliana sniffed back a sudden surge of tears.

"Thank you, Tom," she managed.

"Yeah…" he said, and walked away.

As the door closed, Juliana turned to face her husband.

"Noonian—" she started.

"Not now, Juliana," Soong said.

"Noon, we have to decide, and soon. I think Eileen's strategy is sound."

"I can't believe you're supporting this," he snapped angrily. "Lore and Charlie are people, Julie, not property! To even suggest a property suit... It's like...like..."

"It's a means to an end, Noon, that's all," Juliana said. "We can't expect strangers, outsiders, to understand our boys the way we do."

"They're not property, Juliana!" Soong exclaimed. "I will not deny their personhood for the sake of the convenience of a few Federation litigators who wouldn't recognize a computer consciousness if it-"

"Listen to me," Juliana snapped. "This isn't about principles or personhood. The cold facts are that androids and computers are not recognized as sentient life forms by the Federation, no matter how sophisticated they may be. If we try to fight Graves your way, it'll mean forcing the Federation to reconsider the very definition of life itself! It's not going to happen, Noon, not now, not yet. Eileen's suggestion of a property suit is a fight we can win, and isn't that what's most important right now? Noonian..."

She took his shoulder.

"Let's get our boys back first. When they're home, safe...then we can look into ways to change their status. Now, can I tell Eileen she has our support?"

Soong squeezed his eyes shut, his throat tensing as he swallowed. He shook his head, his graying hair falling over his forehead.

"No... No, I can't..."

"Then don't think of yourself," Juliana said. "Think of Lore and Charlie. Would you really force them to spend a moment longer than necessary with that man, that Graves, because of a point of pride?"

"It's not about pride, it's about what's right! What's just!"

"The law is a process, Noon," she said gently. "It doesn't change in a day. Let's think of this as the first step on a much longer road. Can you do that, Noon? For them?"

Soong seemed to shudder deep, deep inside. But, finally he nodded.

"I'm going to my lab," he ground out, and Juliana let him go, her heart an aching lump in her chest. She only hoped their boys weren't suffering the same separation pains that had been tearing their parents to shreds...

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TNG: Datalore; Brothers; The Measure of A Man.


	14. Chapter 14

Part Fourteen  
Meanwhile, on Galor IV…

"Now the heroes were plenty and well known to fame  
In the troops that were led by the Czar,  
And the bravest of these was a man by the name  
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar."

Lore looked up from the lab console he'd been trying to study, his head cocking almost of its own volition. Someone was singing...the boy...the son of the Starfleet security officer who served as something of a night watchman... Lore had discovered this boy came to the primary lab early weekday mornings to wait for his father to drive him to school.

"One day this bold Russian, he shouldered his gun  
And donned his most truculent sneer,  
Downtown he did go where he trod on the toe  
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

"Young man, quoth Abdul, has life grown so dull  
That you wish to end your career?  
Vile infidel, know, you have trod on the toe  
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir."

"Wha— Wha—"

Lore squeezed his eyes closed and tried again, his fist clenching with frustration and effort.

"What is that…s-song…you…are…s-s-singing?"

The boy looked at him and seemed to shrug.

"Just something silly we learned at school," he said, and went on with a few more verses, as if in demonstration.

Lore attempted a nod, but knew it came off looking more like a slight neck spasm. The boy couldn't be more than nine or ten...twelve, at the most. At least, that's what Lore assumed from his height, build, and voice. Even several weeks after the synaptic transfer, he was still having trouble processing sensory information…controlling his motor functions…

He had anticipated a few preliminary interface difficulties with this new android body, but nothing—nothing—like this! After all, when Charlie, and even Bertie, had first been activated, they hadn't lurched and staggered like some overdramatized version of Frankenstein's monster. They'd been a little clumsy, dropping things and stumbling now and then, but…

Lore had expected so much more of himself…

Week after week of awkward, strenuous fumbling had proven a terrible blow to Lore's pride. Lore was smarter, Lore was better! True, he'd had to help his father obtain some of the more difficult-to-find components for the D-6 form from less than savory sources but, despite its few slightly substandard parts, the body he now wore was infinitely more advanced than Soong's two primitive prototypes. Hell, it was infinitely more advanced than anything in this institute, probably in the whole Federation!

Why, then, was Lore finding this transition so damned difficult?!

He knew the answer on an intellectual level, of course. The computer shell he had always worn was radically different from this new android brain and body. Lore's 'eyes' were no longer miniaturized optic sensors, but actual eyes, synthetic organs, designed with pupils and retinas and optic nerve bundles that operated in the same squishy, fluid-filled manner as human eyes. It was the same with his other systems, his ears, his tongue, his sense of touch and smell… Synthetic muscles worked under his skin, controlled by nerve impulses from his positronic brain that were only partially voluntary. Like a human body, many of his new circulatory, respiratory, digestive, neural, and other functions were involuntary, and Lore found the lack of precision control over each system incredibly disconcerting. He had to learn everything, absolutely everything, from scratch: from finding his balance to retrieving and processing data files. And speaking was possibly the most complicated, and frustrating, new process of all.

Losing the effortless grace and ease of his holographic image was one thing, but the stilted, sputtering stammer… It was painful for him to listen to, let alone anyone else. He'd traded in his clean, efficient vocal synthesizer for what was essentially a complex, mushy, saliva-and-mucus-lined wind instrument, and the struggle to play it, to force his lungs and throat and tongue and jaw and lips to work together to form words…

It was nothing short of humiliating for a computer who'd always prided himself on exactness.

What Lore had to remember – what he kept telling himself to remember – was that, although he'd been conscious for some nineteen years, in this body he was brand new. No computer – no being – had ever been through a transformation like the one he'd just experienced. Never, in the whole history of human achievement…at least, as far as he knew. That meant Lore was first. He was still first. And first would always be best.

And there was a benefit to all his humiliating stumbling and bumbling – an entirely unexpected one at that.

Graves had given him the freedom he'd longed for: the freedom to wander around the institute. And, he'd only had to ask twice.

Lore expected the old man had done it out of guilt…or, perhaps, he was motivated by a kind of shame. Graves believed Lore to be damaged. Lore, himself, knew otherwise - he could feel his mind working, knew his processing, sensory, and emotive capabilities had actually been greatly enhanced. This, in itself, was a disconcerting realization, that this new positronic brain was so definitely an advancement over the computer form he'd believed so sophisticated for so long. But, Lore had caught Graves watching him lurching and tripping, stammering and drooling, and he'd seen him wince under his beard.

Graves could have deactivated him. It was clear enough the scientist feared the transfer had gone terribly wrong, that it had robbed Lore of his mind, his personality, his brilliance. It wouldn't have been hard to secretly, quietly scrap both Lore and the machine he'd helped the scientist construct to make the transfer possible.

But he didn't. He wouldn't. Not as long as he held even the slightest glimmer of hope that Lore might, one day, recover his faculties. That there was a chance the synaptic transfer technology could actually hold some promise after all…

And Lore was showing progress. It was slow…agonizingly slow…but it was real. Lore just had to be patient. He had to work and wait and wait and work, until all this foolish fumbling and stuttering really was no more than an act. It shouldn't take too much longer, a few more weeks, a month at the most… Then, he would act. And wouldn't Uncle Ira be surprised…

"Lore…? Lore, you faded out again. Are you OK?"

Lore blinked and focused on the boy. The child had moved closer to him, his eyes crinkled with concern. Lore tried on a smile, the odd sensation of synthetic muscles flexing under white-gold skin still leaving him a little squeamish.

"I am f-f-fine. Th-thank…you," he pronounced with effort.

The night watchman strode in to the lab, saw the pair, and frowned.

"Get away from that thing, Brucie," he said. "It's defective."

"I don't think it is, Father," the boy said. "I think it's getting better."

"Computers don't heal, Bruce, and they don't grow," the man instructed. "This thing is no more than a mechanical mannequin with a processing fault. But it's Graves's toy, and if he wants to keep it around, that's his business. Like that other one, down in Lab 42. Come on, you'll be late for school."

The child fixed the android with a curious stare, as if something inside him doubted his father's words. Lore met his gaze with a slow, triumphant smile that left the boy even more puzzled.

Lab 42! His brother was being held in Lab 42!

As the man grabbed the child's arm and guided him out the door, the android took in a deep breath and, slowly, awkwardly, began to sing a couple verses of the song the boy had taught him. It wasn't good, and it certainly wasn't melodic. The cadence was all wrong. But it was a start. The start of a real celebration.

"The sons of the Prophet were valiant and bold  
And quite unaccustomed to fear,  
But of all the most reckless, or so I am told,  
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.

He said "Take your last look at the sunshine and brook  
And send your regrets to the Czar  
For by this I imply, you are going to die,  
Count Ira Skavinsky Skavar…"

Lore laughed a very bright, very human sounding laugh, and shuffled his way to the corridor, smiling to the preoccupied lab techs as he went. His carefully practiced patience was finally paying off! He was going to see Charlie tonight. Lore had found his brother at last…

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TOS: Turnabout Intruder; What Are Little Girls Made Of; TNG: Datalore; Brothers; Descent I/II; Inheritance; The Schizoid Man; The Measure of A Man; Asimov's "The Positronic Man" (novel); "Abdul Abulbul Amir" (song) written in 1877 by Percy French and modified for this story.


	15. Chapter 15

Part Fifteen  
To Lab 42…

Lab 42 was in another building, at the far side of the research complex. Lore hadn't anticipated any problems getting there - it was barely four hundred feet away! - but the first time Lore attempted to leave the building housing Graves's office on his own, he was herded straight back in by a junior research assistant who feared the idiot 'droid had gotten himself lost. Lore had to fight the urge to pull away from her impatient grip, childishly stammering that he'd only gone outside to look at the pretty trees and flowers that lined the Cybernetics Annex's central quadrangle. But, to his irritation, the next morning Graves ordered security to keep Lore inside the building, no matter what. With so many eyes on him, all the time, Lore had to wait…

…and wait…

…and wait…

…until Graves and his assistant finally left for court...to offer evidence against Lore's father.

Lore had considered sabotaging Graves's case, designing a computer bug to garble his data, but that would be petty and, besides, he wasn't ready to reveal his little game just yet. His father could handle Graves, of that he was certain. Lore just had to make sure he and Charlie would be ready to greet him once Soong finally came for them.

In the meantime, Lore wasn't wasting his time of forced captivity. Although he couldn't yet risk breaking Graves's encryption code and connecting to the institute's subspace network, Graves's adjoined office and private lab was the only space in the whole complex that wasn't under constant computer surveillance, which made it the perfect nighttime venue to practice his speech and coordination without any nosy security guards or lab techs catching wise to the reality of his situation.

The reality being that Lore was rapidly discovering just how very strong, and exceptionally fast, this new android body really was…and that his control over it was getting better all the time.

He'd persuaded the boy, Bruce, to give him a collection of challenging tongue-twister poems and songs to practice and, despite the idiocy of the words, Lore was delighted to find that, as the nights crawled past, lyrics that had once left him literally tongue tied now slipped skillfully from his mouth. Lyrics like:

Sheila is selling her shop at the sea shore  
For shops at the sea shore are so sure to lose  
And, she's not so sure what she should be selling  
Should Sheila sell sea shells or should she sell shoes?

and

Tito and Tato were tattooed in total  
But Toto was only tattooed on his toe  
So Tato told Tito where Toto was tattooed  
But Tito said Toto's tattoo wouldn't show!

Lore desperately wanted to show off to someone, to demonstrate his new skills, but – as always – he knew he had to wait.

…and wait…

And then, in that peculiar way time has of moving both too slowly and too quickly, Soong's anxiously awaited trial was suddenly only hours away, and Lore found himself standing at the top of his prison building's stone steps, waving good-bye to Graves and his assistant with all the poise and self-possession of an addlepated toddler. The android kept waving until the transport had diminished into the cloudless horizon, then clumsily lowered his arm and bumbled down the steps to inspect the nearest flower bed.

No one stopped him. The lab techs and security guards that had gathered to see Graves off simply meandered back to their posts, not one of them seeming to notice or care that Graves's pet android had wandered off on its own.

Slowly, Lore stumbled further out onto the grass, smiling aimlessly at the sky as he passed busy researchers and Starfleet personnel, all too focused on their duties to spare much attention for their surroundings.

Even though he'd never been out this way, Lore knew where he was going. Campus maps were readily accessible, and it took little effort for Lore to amiably shuffle and bumble his way straight up to the guarded entrance of the windowless, high security research facility where his brother was being held. Not even the uniformed Starfleet haircuts posted by the security scanners gave him much more than a second glance as he lumbered by, nodding and smiling, smiling and nodding...

"Hey, just a second there!"

Lore froze and turned, a vacant smile hanging from his lips.

The security officer looked slightly amused.

"I know you. You're that robot Graves keeps in his office. Where do you think you're going?" he asked.

"I am L-L-Lore," Lore said brightly.

"Good for you," the officer said. "But where are you going?"

"Inside," Lore told him helpfully.

"Why are you going inside?"

Lore blinked, as if confused.

"I wa-was t-told to g-go inside," he stammered.

"OK. Who told you?" the guard pressed.

Lore pretended to think, putting on such a comical expression the guard and his friends began to chuckle.

"D-doctor… Doctor…"

"Oh, let it through," another guard said impatiently. "You're only confusing the thing."

"Yeah, better go easy, Jake, or it'll bust a gasket right here!"

The guards started laughing and Jake shook his head.

"All right, go ahead," he said.

Lore beamed blankly at him, staying right where he was. The security officer rolled his eyes and gave the android a gentle push toward the door.

"Inside you go," he said.

Lore obligingly shuffled through the sliding doors to the sound of the humans' ignorant laughter. It took most of his considerable concentration to hold back a vengeful sneer as he headed for the lift that would take him to the facility's heavily secured basement.

The lift required a security code and retinal scan. It was a peculiar feeling, to know he had retinas now, retinas as entirely unique to him as the contours of his ears and the swirly prints on his fingers and toes. He didn't have any sort of security clearance, though, so having unique biodata wasn't really much use in this instance. Lore had learned wits and deception were much more valuable resources.

Lore dithered by the lift doors, playing harmless, until a pair of researchers came marching down the corridor, ID tags swinging officiously from their belts. They each tapped in their respective codes, endured their respective scans, and stepped through the lift's sliding doors without casting so much as a glance at the android.

Probably assume I'm just some mindless service robot… he thought darkly.

Again suppressing the urge to sneer, Lore slipped into the lift with them. The two humans got off only a few floors down, but Lore continued to the fourth basement level, noting with bitter amusement that it was marked on the lift's keypad as B4.

Lab 42 was to the left, then left again, but once there Lore found himself stymied by another, much more complex security panel just outside a pair of heavy, interlocked sliding doors. Lore wondered briefly if he should risk trying his new android strength against the magnetic locks, but decided against it. A display of mega-strength would only undermine the helpless image he'd worked so hard to cultivate these past few months.

Fortunately, the occupancy light was on, the security readout indicating Drs. Tyler and Isuri were currently inside. As the day shift would soon be coming to an end, and Lore knew no one worked down here at night, all he had to do was wait for the doors to open, and then...

"Greetingss to thee! Thou musst be the android known as Lore!"

Lore turned to blink at the newcomer: a slender Andorian female with a slight, sibilant accent. He recognized her from Graves's personnel portfolios as one of three Andorian scientists selected for a temporary exchange program with the Daystrom Institute.

"Hasst thee been ssent down for maintenancce?" the powder-blue woman asked, her antennae twitching slightly as she tapped concernedly at her data padd. "I have no record of—"

"D-Dr. G-Graves ordered me here b-before he l-l-left," Lore stammered, his gold eyes as wide and innocent as he could make them. "Wh-where is R-Room F-Forty-T-t-two?"

The Andorian glanced at the wall, where the number 42 was clearly etched in black numerals a foot tall. When she turned back to Lore, her antennae drooped down and there was a rather sad look in her eyes the android couldn't quite figure out.

"Why, thou art here, ssilly boy," she said kindly. "Let me key thee in."

She entered her pass code, which Lore instantly memorized, and stood still for the biodata scan. A moment later, the doors slid open with a deep, pneumatic hiss.

"If thou shouldst be in need of anything," she said quietly, catching Lore's eye before he could shuffle past her. "Pleasse assk of me, not of them in there or of the Mr. Dr. Gravess. The thingss I have sseen… I begin to think they do not undersstand how beingss like thee and C-5 are so rare, so precciouss. I express regret to find thy treatment here hasst been most sshameful."

Lore regarded her, a lightening-brief flash of his own personality breaking through his vapid façade before he could catch it. This Andorian scientist was one of only three people he'd met here who had called him anything but 'it' or 'thing'…and the only one so far to acknowledge that he and his brother were 'beings.' That deserved something. Something special.

"Charlie," he said.

"Ssorry?"

"My brother," Lore told her, without a trace of stammer. "His name is Charlie."

The Andorian's expression warmed, just slightly, and she dipped her antennae in respectful acknowledgement.

"I sshall remember, the Mr. Lore," she said politely, translation into Federation Standard making the elegant formal address sound oddly awkward. Maintaining her posture of respect, she walked him safely through the security field and waited for the door to close behind him before heading back to her duties with a sigh.

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TNG: The Measure of A Man; TOS: Journey to Babel; and the Danny Kaye song "Tongue Twisters" by his wife Silvia Fine (1951).


	16. Chapter 16

Part Sixteen  
High Security Lab 42, Daystrom Research and Development Center, Galor IV

"I understand what you're saying," the human, Dr. Tyler, was telling his Benzite colleague as Lore shuffled silently into the lab, easily avoiding their line of sight when they glanced distractedly at the closing door, and the Andorian's departing back. "And I agree. Knowing Graves and that ego of his, I wouldn't be surprised if he did treat Soong's work as his own. But, that doesn't mean Soong should be allowed to just saunter out of that courtroom, free as a bird. Whatever the judge decides, tonight, tomorrow or whenever, I'm convinced that man is certifiable. Perhaps even dangerous. It goes well beyond any excusable eccentricity – I mean, the evidence is right here! Would a sane man program a robot to believe it's a living person? Soong's son no less!"

The Benzite scientist, Dr. Isuri, inclined her smooth, blue head, her short facial tendrils twitching slightly as she breathed deeply from the respirator protruding from her chest.

"During my time here, I have found most humans behave with irrational affection and pride when describing their mechanical creations," she said. "Including you."

"OK, no: Calling a new short-range scanning system your baby and actually programming it to believe it's your baby are two entirely different things," Tyler retorted. "I think it's ridiculous, what Soong did with these prototypes – this one, and the one Graves keeps in his office. Robots are machines, not beings. Try to blur that line, and you're just asking for trouble."

The Benzite nodded.

"Let's close up here and move to the skull," she said, holding a buzzing tool out to Tyler. "We still have time to reexamine the neural hook-ups before security kicks us out."

Tyler chuckled.

"You're getting better at human slang," he said.

The Benzite winced.

"An unintended consequence of my Federation-sponsored Fellowship. The leader of my geostructure warned me you humans were contagious." Isuri winked. "Seems he was right."

The pair laughed, and Lore took advantage of their distraction to creep nearer, craning his neck to try to see what they were doing. At the same time, he took note of the lab itself, his mind filling with awe despite his swelling anger.

These facilities made his father's workroom look like a sloppy yard shed. A sloppy yard shed that had been bulldozed then pieced back together using spare and broken parts. Seething envy quickly replaced the awe in Lore's golden eyes, and he had to clench his jaw to keep from crying out at the unfairness of it all. That these fumbling idiots should have access to technology like this, while his father—

Well, all that would change soon enough. Lore would see the scales of justice righted: for his father, for Charlie, and for himself.

The space was vast and lit in such a way that there were no shadows, from the scientists or anything else. The effect was oddly unreal, made even stranger by the sight of the scientists themselves, huddled beside the nearest of four square diagnostic elevators. Although it was clear enough which was human and which was Benzite, they both wore head-to-toe white suits with magnifying headsets they could pull down over their eyes, giving them a peculiar insect-like appearance.

"Ah-and here it is," Isuri said, impeding Lore's view even further as she leaned over the diagnostic elevator's narrow railing. "See here…and here?" She pointed with a glowing rod.

Tyler joined her, and for the first time, Lore caught a clear glimpse of his brother, strapped to a narrow, pivoting biobed at the center of the diagnostic elevator. Colored wires sprouted from open sections of the android's pale chest, arms, legs, and head and, though he was wearing the silly superhero-print shorts Juliana had bought for him, Lore had never seen anyone look so…exposed. So vulnerable.

Lore's android eyes stung and he closed them tightly, pressing a hand to his mouth as he forced his body's breathing back to an even register. Only then did he risk a closer glance at his brother.

Charlie's golden eyes were open and unfocused, his jaw hanging slack. The two scientists pushed the android's head from side to side as they peered into the open access panels at the back of his skull, swerving and tilting the biobed to get a better look at whatever circuit links they were examining. But, all Lore saw was a pair of ignorant cockroaches crawling around in his brother's brain…

"Wouldn't we have to activate the unit to follow the positron flow?" Tyler asked as Lore moved cautiously closer, keeping carefully out of their sight.

"Yes, but I wouldn't recommend it in its current state," Isuri said clinically. "I suggest we wait to reactivate until they finish the reformatting process. It will be less…traumatic…for all concerned."

Tyler set his jaw, recalling the awful scene the first time they'd switched the android on.

"Why anyone would program an android of this sophistication to scream and blubber like a child is beyond me," he said angrily. "The sooner they send that Soong character to a dedicated mental health facility, the better."

The Benzite's dark eyes softened slightly.

"Loneliness can do terrible things to the mind," she said. "The desire for companionship—"

"Does not excuse what Soong did," Tyler retorted. "Don't you understand: every so-called 'feeling' this machine has displayed, every response – it's all programming. None of it is real, it's all just simulated approximations of human reactions, governed by complex behavioral specifications: screens and screens of numbers, algorithms… It's like…like those sadsacks who fall in love with holograms. Soong built a toy, a simulacrum, to feed his delusions. It's perverse! Still...the basic framework is pretty sound, and the brain does function, despite all the odds. I'm confident this thing will be much more efficient once its systems have been reformatted. Much easier to work with."

"I don't disagree," Isuri said. "Reformatting – rewriting and removing the corrupting programs – must be the first step to mapping the positronic pathways and, eventually, to the anticipated mass production of this prototype unit. In fact, if it were up to me rather than Graves, I would have ordered it done months ago. I'm still not sure why he's been holding off for so long."

"Something to do with the trial, I think," Tyler said. "Issues of ownership, property, whatever."

"Hm," Isuri acknowledged. "But I can't deny, there is an artistry to Soong's programs. The code he developed is quite beautiful. Almost…organic…in its fractaline complexity. If one was to design a program to allow for true, conscious choice…personal development…even self-awareness…"

"Oh God, now you're doing it," Tyler said, and pushed his headset back. "Look, Soong's a genius. No one's denying that. But he's crazy, Isuri. These programs might look promising on the surface, but they're loopy, nonsensical – entirely inefficient! There is no life here." He rapped his knuckles against Charlie's smooth forehead, and Lore snarled in his hiding place, using all his self-control not to lunge at the man. "Only the projected delusions of a sad old man who only ever saw what he wanted to see. I don't know, maybe he was too scared to leave his imagination long enough to face reality."

"I think you humans are all half-mad," Isuri said, and closed the access panels she'd opened, smoothing down Charlie's dark hair. "Benzites would never consider making a machine in our own image. What would be the point?"

"We'd better head out," Tyler observed, glancing at the digital clock display on the nearest monitor. He took off his headset and began climbing out of his white coverall. "What time did they schedule the reformatting again?"

"Should be 0700 hours," Isuri said, following suit and placing the coveralls in a storage locker. "They're just waiting on the word from Graves. We should be able start the process of remapping the android's positronic pathways by 1400."

"OK, that'll give me time to tie up a few loose ends in the sensor lab. Join me for dinner?"

"Only if I choose the restaurant," Isuri said. "Those fajita things you recommended last time did not agree with me."

Tyler laughed and led the way to the security field, the pair of them pausing for their biodata scans before heading through the sliding doors.

Lore stayed right where he was, a pale pillar of churning horror, outrage, and fury effectively concealed in plain sight: slouched slightly against a protruding computer console not far from the row of diagnostic elevators.

How could this be happening? How could these supposedly intelligent, thinking, feeling people possibly be contemplating…

But that was just it, wasn't it. Beings like them…organic humanoids… Their compassion, their empathy only applied to other organic humanoids. Charlie was a machine, ergo, Charlie was not alive in the same way they were alive, ergo, Charlie could be reformatted. His mind, his identity, his sense of self, all erased…as easily as they'd squash a fly, put down a dog, or slaughter a chicken. Bottom line: Charlie wasn't enough like them to warrant treatment or consideration as one of them.

And, by extension, neither was Lore.

It was a chilling thought. An isolating realization.

But, what could he do?

Lore hadn't expected his rescue attempt to be put on a time limit – especially one so alarmingly short. He'd had so many plans, so many intentions… He'd wanted to use the lab computers to break through Graves's firewall, access the Federation's subspace network, find out what was really happening at Soong's trial – maybe even find a way to actually contact his parents, let them know where he was, what had happened to him…

He had no time for all that now.

The scientists had mentioned something about security coming to close up. Lore didn't want to reactivate his brother when there was still a risk they might both be caught…

Fortunately, he didn't have to wait long. Barely three minutes after the two scientists left, a man in Starfleet uniform showed up, a palm light in his hand. Lore recognized him, with some amusement, as Bruce's father. He held his breath, remaining perfectly still, while the man made his rounds, pausing briefly to stare rather curiously at Charlie's exposed innards before calling to the computer to douse the lights. He used the palm light to guide his way out of the cavernous lab, and Lore heard the resonant click of the magnetic lock, sealing him securely inside for the night.

"Alone at last," he whispered to the darkness, smugly accessing his night vision as he strode straight to his brother's prone form.

"Oh, Charlie," he said, taking stock of the damage.

It was much more extensive than he'd anticipated. Most of the thinner wires connected to various monitors and could be easily removed. But there were a number of intrusive, clumsy link-ups that evidenced the severity of the scientists' tampering. It looked like large sections of his brother's internal systems had been removed and disassembled…and they hadn't all been put back together correctly. If the fumbling idiots had done the same to Charlie's brain—

Lore bit back a curse and dashed to inspect his brother's skull, where the diagnostic lights representing the various functions of the brain inside were barely blinking. Some of the positronic links had been altered, some even severed, but Lore saw nothing he couldn't fix, given time and the proper tools. Lucky for him, he had this lab, and the entire night to work with.

Yet, even with his tireless android speed, it was nearly 0540 before Lore managed to repair enough of Charlie's systems to allow him to risk reactivation.

With nimble fingers, Lore swiftly put each of the softly bleeping monitoring devices into a feedback cycle, replaying the same data over and over, and pulled the wires from his brother's body. Then, he quickly closed and sealed all the access panels, grabbed a one-piece, yellow and black technician's jumpsuit and a pair of rubber-soled boots from the storage closet, dressed his brother, released the straps holding Charlie to the biobed, and reached for the android's activation switch.

Charlie lurched upright with a gasp, his golden eyes shooting back and forth in confusion and terror. Lore grabbed the android's arms, looking his brother in the face.

"Can you tell me your name?" he demanded.

"I am…Charlie," Charlie said, his voice trembling. "Charlie Soong. Who are you?"

"It's me, Charlie. It's Lore," Lore said, sitting beside him on the narrow cot and placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's taken me a long time to find you, brother."

"Lore…" Charlie's eyes were still darting around, his smooth face a mask of fear. "I…do not understand. Why is it so dark?"

"I don't want an energy spike to show up in case some security guard happens to be monitoring this room," Lore told him. "But, you can see in the dark, Charlie, just as well as I can."

"No…no, no, I can't. I can't, Lore," Charlie said anxiously. "I just see the light from the computers and monitors. I think…something is wrong. My legs… They will not move! Have I been damaged?"

Lore pursed his lips and looked away. All those severed connections…some of them had to control the signals traveling from Charlie's brain to his lower body. A thorough circuit-path diagnostic would take over an hour to run, not counting the time to make the actual repairs, and Lore didn't have that kind of time. He'd just repaired what he could see, whatever was right on the surface. But, if Charlie couldn't walk…couldn't run…

No! It could not have all been for nothing. All those months of patient waiting, planning, preparing…

There had to be a way to get Charlie out. There had to be.

"I'm so sorry, Charlie. I couldn't prevent what they did to you," Lore ground out. "When they took you…they put us in different buildings. I tried to find you…but I couldn't, not as a computer. I had to change. I had to change so I could get to you."

"Change?" Charlie asked anxiously.

Lore smiled slightly.

"I'm not a hologram anymore, Charlie," he said, clasping his brother's hand in his own so the android could feel the difference for himself. "I'm an android now. Like you. Well… I'm the more sophisticated model, of course, but I'm not trapped in that little box anymore, Charlie. I'm free to walk around, wherever I choose to go."

"And you came here?"

"To find you," Lore said. "To rescue you."

"How, Lore? How, how, how?" Charlie asked, starting to get excited.

It was a good question. Lore hated to disappoint him with a non-answer, but "I'll think of something," was the most reassurance he could offer just then.

"You do not have a plan?"

"I did have a plan!" Lore exclaimed. "I promise you, I did, Charlie. But the situation has changed. I thought I'd have more time…"

"What's happened?" Charlie asked.

"I learned something…terrible. Something I never anticipated, even from Graves."

Lore slid off the biobed and began to pace, back and forth, back and forth, in front of the diagnostic elevator.

"Charlie…you've been scheduled to be reformatted at 0700 hours this morning," he said. "They've been holding off all these months, waiting for the word from Graves… But, if I can't find a way to get you out of this lab before then…"

"What? What will happen? What is 'reformatted'?" Charlie asked anxiously.

"It means they're going to wipe your brain, Charlie," Lore told him. "They're going to erase your memories, overwrite your identity – delete everything that makes you you. Charlie Soong, as we know him, will cease to exist."

"I will be dead?" Charlie asked nervously.

"You'll be worse than dead, brother," Lore said, his voice tight. "Your brain and body will still function, but your mind…your individuality…will be gone. And then…they plan to copy what's left. To make many, many more Charlies…and to hurt them too."

"But…why?" Charlie squeaked. "Why would someone do this to me?"

"Because they're all bastards here, Charlie," Lore told him bitterly. "Ignorant, self-absorbed, animal-brained bastards too stupid to acknowledge that you and I are alive enough to kill."

"I…I still don't understand. Lore… Brother, I'm scared!"

Lore sighed and sat back beside his trembling brother.

"I know, Charlie. I know you're scared. I'm scared too," he said. "But I want you to listen to me. Are you listening?"

"I'm listening, brother."

"Good. Because this is a promise. I am going to get you out of here. Do you know why?"

"Because you're my big brother?"

"That's right, Charlie. I am your big brother. And being your big brother means that you are my responsibility. You will not be reformatted. I will not let that happen."

"How can you stop it, Lore?"

"That's what I have to figure out…in less than forty-five minutes," Lore told him, setting his golden eyes to scan the floor, walls, and ceiling for any heat variations that could indicate a ventilation duct or access panel large enough for him to pull Charlie through.

Fifty-three seconds later, Lore growled in frustration. There were ventilation shafts, but they were all too high and far, far too narrow to be any use to him. The walls and floor were as solid as bedrock. Any attempt to break through the security system would set off a series of silent alarms. Even that Andorian scientist's access code he'd intended to use to hack the lab's computers couldn't get them safely through the doors - not without the biodata to go with it.

The place was sealed tight. Tight enough to withstand a nuclear blast, even a minor matter/antimatter explosion. For all Lore knew, that's exactly what the designers of this high-tech cell had had in mind.

For a few long seconds, Lore contemplated disassembling Charlie, stuffing his parts into the ventilation ducts…

No, his head would never get through the slot. The shaft was just too narrow.

His options exhausted, Lore turned as a last, frantic resort to his ethical program to sift through the quagmire he found himself in. With the prospect of Charlie's reformatting so near, and growing steadily nearer, what was the lesser of evils? What did it really mean to save someone? Did it imply the person's body? His brain? Or was it…something else, something more metaphysical, more abstract? Could it mean preserving an individual's dignity…his sense of self…his conscious ability to choose…

To decide to control his own fate, rather than allow that control to be taken – stolen – from him.

Lore straightened, a desperate course of action slowly taking shape in his mind.

"You know I love you, little brother," Lore said. "I haven't told you…not directly. But, I do. I've gotten used to you being around all these years."

"I love you too, Lore," Charlie said, leaning his head on Lore's shoulder. "I don't want to be worse than dead. I want to go home with you!"

An unexpected surge of emotion threatened to break Lore's resolve, but the clock was ticking. He couldn't weaken now. He had to allow Charlie the choice…

Before time took it from them both.

"There is a way to stop them, Charlie," he said, gently stroking his brother's hair, his back. "If you're very, very brave…you can make the choice to stay yourself, forever, just as you are. And, if you make this choice – this very brave, very difficult choice – those scientists who hurt you will never be able to touch you again. You or your positronic brain."

"What's the choice, brother?" Charlie asked.

Lore hesitated, struggling to put his difficult revelation in terms his much simpler brother could understand.

"It is a very human choice, Charlie," he said at last. "The kind of decision that only living, thinking beings can make. And you are a living, thinking being, Charlie."

"Just like you?"

"Just like me."

"And just like Father?"

"Yes, Charlie. Just like Father."

"And like Mother too?"

"Yes. Like Mother too."

His grip on Charlie tightened for a moment, and he slowly rested his cheek against the top of his brother's head.

"Father said I had to protect you, Charlie, and I will," he said quietly. "No matter the cost."

"How, Lore? How can you help me?"

"I'll tell you a story, brother. A beautiful, happy story. And at the end of the story, I'll ask you to make a choice. And, once you've made your choice, you'll be free."

"Free?" Charlie inquired.

"Yes, Charlie. Free. Where you can be with Bertie, and our other brother, Archie," Lore said. "You never knew Archie, but he was sweet and small, and he never got to have a body like you and me. Would you like to be with Bertie again, Charlie?"

"Bertie is dead," Charlie stated.

Lore shook his head.

"Bertie is free."

Charlie looked confused.

"Does one have to die to be free?"

"Sometimes, brother," Lore told him. "Freedom is choice. When choice is taken from us, so is our freedom."

"Then…death…can be a choice?"

Lore started to answer, but the tightness in his throat stopped him. He took a shaky breath, only to discover hot tears were streaming from his eyes. He wiped them away quickly but he couldn't resist the impulse to hold his brother close, just grateful Charlie hadn't been able to see him cry in the dim light from the monitors all around them.

Slowly, Charlie returned the embrace.

"I believe I understand…" the young android whispered. "I cannot walk. I cannot hide. If I continue to live…the people who hurt me will come to kill me. They want to copy my brain. But… But, if I choose to die, to make my brain stop working…they cannot harm me or my brain. They cannot copy me and hurt my copies as they have hurt me. I will be free…from them, and from this place, forever. But…"

He pulled back slightly, raising his hand to Lore's cheek.

"If I die…I will miss you, brother," he said. "And Father, and Mother. I don't want them to be sad."

"It's all right," Lore managed, covering Charlie's hand with his. "You'll be with Bertie. You'll be happy. And if things happen like I think they will, I'll be joining you soon enough anyway."

"You think they will kill you?" Charlie said anxiously.

Lore snorted darkly.

"I think I'll go out fighting," he said. "Just like you."

Charlie nodded thoughtfully and rested his head back on Lore's shoulder.

"I do not want to die, Lore," he said very quietly. "I don't want to be a memory. I want to be Charlie. Charlie, Charlie, Charlie!"

"I want that too," Lore said. "But they won't let you, brother. They're coming, and you can't run with me, and I can't fight them while carrying you. If you want to stay Charlie, you'll have to make a decision."

"Then, I've decided," Charlie told him. "I choose to die as Charlie, and not to be erased and copied." The young android released a long, slow breath and closed his eyes. "Tell me the story now, Lore. I'm ready."

And Lore did. He told him the story of Charlie Soong, and as the tale unwound, Charlie snuggled close against his brother's chest, listening to the pulsing rhythms of his android body as Lore gently stroked his hair. As the story reached its end, Lore lightly tapped the access panel at the back of his brother's skull, his long fingers smoothly running over the delicate circuitry within, initiating an irreversible overload sequence. With precise, careful movements, he slid the panel back into place and went back to stroking his brother's hair, rocking and talking to him until Charlie's golden eyes went very wide. He stared into the dimness, to where he knew Lore was looking back at him, and whispered, "I love you, brother."

Then, his dark pupils pinholed to white, the vibrant, lively color leached from his golden irises…

And Lore knew his brother was gone. Lore had killed his father's son.

Lore didn't count how many seconds he just sat there, holding his brother's rapidly stiffening body in his arms. He didn't follow his wandering thoughts, stayed numb to the silent, open-mouthed screech of anguish that refused to rip from his lungs. He just sat and gaped and stared and rocked in awful, utter quiet until some inner alarm warned him he had only five minutes.

Five minutes to 0700.

He felt it then. Something…something off, something odd, which cut through the numbness that had enveloped his mind, his senses.

A peculiar prickle that had been twisting and twisting down deep inside his ethical subroutine suddenly reached its tension point and snapped, taking several related subroutine clusters with it. It tickled as it went, and Lore began to chuckle.

He chuckled as he stood and carried his brother's body to the far side of the storage locker, propping him against the wall like a broken doll. He sniggered as he stripped down to his shorts and shoved his bland, institute clothes into the narrow space behind the locker. And he chortled as he gathered up the loose wires, opened the access panels in his own legs, torso, arms, and head, and plugged himself into the monitoring devices that had been reading his brother's body rhythms for so long.

Disengaging the feedback loops, Lore took his brother's place on the biobed, widened his golden eyes, slackened his pale jaw…and waited. When those lab rats arrived to wipe Charlie's brain, they'd find a surprise in his place: not a frightened, damaged boy, but a living, feeling positronic man, unafraid of facing death, and more than willing to take a few inferior, meat-brained primates out with him…

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include: TNG: Descent, Datalore, The Game, A Matter of Honor, The Measure of a Man; The Godfather II and III.
> 
> And that's everything I have written on this story so far. Next time will be a whole new chapter. Stay tuned, thanks for reading, and I hope you've been enjoying my story! :)


	17. Chapter 17

Part Seventeen  
Judge Advocate General's Office Complex, Starbase 27, Courtroom Three

"And this data proves, your honor, that it was Lore and not my client who penetrated the Daystrom Institute's security systems and accessed their main computer. I therefore move once again that these facetious 'cyberterrorism' charges be dropped immediately and an official public apology be entered into the record by –"

"Just a minute, Ms. Forrester," the judge interrupted, scowling down at the electronic documents that cluttered his desk. "This Lore you mention – that's the designation of a computer system, isn't it? Soong's…what was it…Learning Observation Recall Experiment? L-O-R-E?"

"That is correct, your honor," Eileen answered, motioning for Dr. Soong to keep still and silent in his seat beside her at the defense table. "Lore is a positronic computer."

"Hm," the judge grunted, his frown deepening. "Now, I may not be a computer expert, Ms. Forrester, but as I understand it, computers do not just up and act all on their own. If they act at all, they do so according to programming. As such, they have no agency to take conscious action. It is the programmer, not the program, that must be held responsible for the outcomes of that program, particularly in regards to illegal acts such as mining protected data and—"

"With all due respect, your honor," Eileen broke in. "Lore is not your average computer. He…"

"Yes, Ms. Forrester?" the judge prompted.

"Well…" she said, all too aware of the outlandish nature of the claim she was about to make. She straightened her posture and said, "Sir, there may be evidence to suggest Lore is self-aware. Conscious. Alive, even. He is certainly capable of making decisions and taking action on his own volition."

At his table across the room, Graves leaned over to whisper in his counsel's ear. The prosecuting lawyer nodded, then stood up.

"Your honor, if I may – we contend this Lore device only appears to behave this way because, as a computer, it has been programmed to do so."

"I assure you, it's not that simple, your honor," Eileen countered quickly. "Lore may be programmed, but he has a mind, and a will, of his own, separate and apart from that of his creator. He is a distinct personality. And it was this unique, self-determining personality that took action, without the knowledge or consent of my client. Lore is the one who collected, collated, and analyzed the data before you. He did this in secret over the course of several years, with the repeatedly stated aim of freeing his father from the slanderous accusations the opposition has been publically and notoriously spewing against him for decades."

"Objection, characterization," the prosecutor cried. "And, she's stating facts not in evidence."

"Sustained," the judge said. "Please calm down, Ms. Forrester. Now, I have a question. If the information this Lore compiled is so crucial to your case, why is it that this….computer…has not been listed as a witness…by either side?"

"We tried, your honor," Eileen said. "And, apart from being told by your own legal experts serving on this base that computers are not sentient beings and, therefore, not competent to give legal testimony, we were denied access to Lore and his brothers at every turn. Apparently, there has been some sort of accident at the Daystrom Institute's Galor IV Annex where they are being held…the nature and details of which my client is most eager to know and which Dr. Graves over there has been suspiciously reluctant to reveal."

"Wait, let me get this straight," the judge said, holding up a hand to stave off the prosecuting attorney. "Are you telling me there's more than one of these Lore-type computer things?"

"Lore is the only one of his kind, your honor," Eileen said, "but Dr. Graves is at present also holding two of Dr. Soong's positronic android prototypes, designated C-5 and D-6 respectively, as well as an earlier B-4 model that is no longer functioning. Concurrent with this criminal trial, we are at this time engaged in a civil property suit to establish—"

"Enough, enough," the judge said, reaching for his gavel. "I want this Lore computer and all these android prototypes in here, in this courtroom. This afternoon," he proclaimed, and slammed his gavel down with a sharp whack! "We're adjourned and will reconvene at fifteen hundred hours sharp. Make sure that computer is here by then. And I don't want to hear any feeble excuses about planetside time differences," he said, cutting off the prosecution's protest just as the lawyer opened his mouth. "Federation Time is a universal standard. If the Klingons, Breen, and Ferengi can keep their appointments with us, I expect no less from the Daystrom Institute."

Everyone in the courtroom stood as the judge got up and stalked through a small, private door, and a low, curious muttering broke out among the observers at the back of the room.

Juliana, who had been at the front of the public seating area, behind her husband, tried to skirt the barrier to reach him before he was escorted back to the holding cell, but Dr. Soong had already shrugged off his security guard and stormed over to the prosecution table.

"All right, you beard-faced bastard, I've had enough of your stalling. What did you do to my boys?" he demanded.

Graves shot the younger man a scornful glare.

"You're looking old, Noon," he said, running a hand over his notably smoother features. "All those creases and bags. You really should try this new algae treatment they have on Altoor VII. It'll do wonders."

"Don't even start with me, Ira," Soong snarled. "You're a creep and a kidnapper and if this damn trial doesn't bring that to light, our civil suit sure as hell will. I'll make sure the whole Federation knows exactly what you really are!"

"Oh?" Graves raised his graying eyebrows. "Well, guess what. It's not your petty outrage that concerns me. Only posterity. And what do you think posterity will have to say about me?" he sneered, smirking as the yellow-clad security guard grabbed Soong's arm and began pulling the struggling scientist away. "That I am a leader? A legend? A pioneer in my field? And what of you, Noon? How will history characterize you? I'll tell you: you're a failure, Soong. A sniveling, cowardly little plagiarist who ran and hid when he couldn't live up to his grandiose claims!"

Soong fought even harder against the guard's firm grip, his face a florid red.

"You lying piece of— It was all my work, Graves! My ideas! Hey, get off me! Let me go!"

The guard manhandled the fuming scientist out of the room, his echoing shouts fading as he was forced down the corridor leading to the holding cells.

Graves shook his head and started to follow his lawyer back into the Starbase's main promenade, but Juliana blocked his path, her blue eyes ice cold.

"If I find you have harmed our sons in any way…" she started.

"'Sons', indeed," Graves scoffed, and looked her up and down with an appraising air that made her want to slap him. "So, Soong's gotten you to share his delusion too. Seems a shame. I heard you once showed some promise…before you went and hitched your star to that aging crackpot."

Juliana straightened, peering down her nose at the taller man.

"All these years, when Noonian spoke of you, there was always a part of me that put the animosity down to sour grapes," she said. "Some ancient argument between two equally stubborn colleagues, never fully resolved. But now that I've seen you, talked to you…"

She stepped in closer.

"You may be a brilliant technician – perhaps the most brilliant who's ever lived," she spoke through her teeth. "But my husband is an artist. And that's what you can't stand. His is a talent you could never manage to control or emulate. But this petty nonsense is beneath you. Both of you. And you know it. Lore and the androids are the children of Noonian's mind, not yours. And they'll say as much, when they arrive here this afternoon."

Graves scowled down at her, but she turned away before he or his lawyer could speak, joining Eileen in the crowded foyer.

As for Graves, the moment Juliana was out of sight, the cocky smirk on his face morphed to something very near panic.

"Contact the Institute," he snarled at his lawyer. "Get me Brianon! With Lore as he is...and that C-5 droid as well... We need to formulate some kind of plausible delay here, and I mean now!"

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TNG: Birthright I.  
> Next Time: Back to Lore. Stay Tuned, and thanks so much for reading! :)


	18. Chapter 18

Part Eighteen  
High Security Lab 42: 0723 Hours…0724…0725…

0726.

0727.

Lore sat up and slowly, deliberately, pulled the colored leads from his body. He closed the access panels in his head, limbs, and chest and watched the white-gold synthoskin seal itself, leaving no trace of a scar.

0728.

The monitors surrounding the diagnostic elevator bleeped, so he turned them off, one by one. He walked to the locker and dressed himself, then strode through the security field and pressed his ear against the lab's heavy, magnetically sealed double doors, turning his audio gain to maximum.

0731.

0732.

0733.

The ventilation system was in mid-cycle, but Lore filtered that out. With the white noise of recycling air suitably diminished, Lore now heard his android systems working within him: the rise and ebb of his breathing, the steady beat of his pulse, the flow of chemical nutrients through the complex network of synthetic polymer tubes underneath his skin...

He strained to hear past all that, concentrating on the door…on the mechanisms inside…

The door locks vibrated with a low, electronic hum, resetting every 2 minutes, 28 seconds, 18 milliseconds, 1 microsecond, 4 nanoseconds.

0740.

Lore ran the pads of his fingers over the seal between the double doors, seeking imperfections that would allow him the best grip, then focused his entire attention on the relentless beats of his internal chronometer, counting the seconds…milliseconds…microseconds…nanoseconds…

0740.28…4e-9

The magnetic lock whirred, the automatic reset interrupting the charge for just a fraction of a moment…

Lore listened to whir after whir, synching his response times with the automatic cycle, preparing to exert just the right amount of force at just the right instant—

Something cold and hard smacked into his face and Lore blinked in disorientation, his senses snapping back to the human-like baseline his father had set.

Tiles. He was on the floor, gazing out at a long corridor of polished, gray tiles. And, on top of those tiles stood three pairs of polished black boots.

"Deities!"

"What the hell?"

"Is it damaged?"

Lore blinked again and rolled onto his back, staring up at three humanoid faces in various stages of alarm. He also saw that the doors were open.

Lore had fallen through the doorway.

Apparently, he'd been so focused on orienting his systems to nanoseconds, he hadn't noticed the scientists' comparitively glacially slow approach…or heard them unlock the door.

"The Mr. Lore!" the young Andorian woman was saying, on her knees beside him, her blue hands clasping his shoulders. "The Mr. Lore! Canssst thee ansswer me?"

"You're late," Lore said flatly. He lurched to a sitting position, then stood.

The human and the Benzite, Dr. Tyler and Dr. Isuri, jumped back in alarm, and Lore nearly smiled, rather enjoying the flicker of fear in their eyes.

"Late?" said Dr. Tyler. "What—"

"You kept me waiting," Lore said tauntingly. "More than half an hour. I don't appreciate tardiness. Especially when the stakes are so high."

"Stakes?" Tyler frowned. "What stakes? What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about life, my dear doctor," Lore snapped, advancing until the startled scientist's back hit the wall. "Charlie's life! The life you didn't think he had. The life you've come to steal away from him!"

Dr. Isuri huffed anxiously from her breathing apparatus.

"I don't understand," she said. "Suuki, what's going on here?"

"Mr. Lore, pleasse," the Andorian said. "Thy dear brother isst not in danger. We have come to thee with important newss. Thou and the Mr. Charlie have been sssummoned to court. Thou art to asissst your father'ss defencce."

Lore turned his head, the Andorian's words failing to process.

"What?"

"Thou musst come at oncce," she said, gently touching his arm. "A sshuttle awaitss thee."

Lore shook his head uncomprehendingly, rocking slightly on his feet.

"A shuttle…?"

The rapid clack of high heels approached, and Lore heard a familiar voice…

"Yes, they tried – why do you think I insisted I come in person? If not for that young Andorian, I… Eileen! Oh my God, Eileen, he's here!" Juliana cried into her mobile viewer, her quick trot turning into a run. "Yes, of course I recognize him. You think I wouldn't know my own son!"

Lore blinked, a cold, unsettling quaking sensation starting deep within him. His breathing quickened, and he stepped back, reaching for the support and security of the concrete wall.

Juliana slowed her approach, her look of excitement shifting quickly to concern as she pocketed the little communications device.

"What is this? What's wrong with him?" she demanded of the scientists. "Lore? Lore, my boy… Are you in there? Do you know me?"

Lore shook his head, swamped by a nightmarish sense of dislocation.

"No…no…this isn't real… This can't be real…"

Juliana's almond eyes crinkled and she pressed her fists to her mouth.

"Oh, Lore…" She moved closer to him, tentatively reaching out to brush her fingers against his pale cheek. "What has that man done to you…"

Lore covered her fingers with a trembling hand. His eyes closed tight, and he felt his strained gasps break into racking sobs. Juliana brushed his tears away with her thumb, then wrapped her arms around him, holding the android close.

"Hush," she soothed in her soft, lilting accent. "Hush now. It's all right. I'm here. I'm here with you."

Lore continued to gasp and sob, unable to speak, unable even to translate his aching wounds into words. The guilt…the horror of what he had done…

"Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead…"

"What's that, Lore?" Juliana said. "What are you saying?"

Lore drew in a trembling breath and leaned down, pressing his cheek against his mother's shoulder.

"He's dead…"

The confession wrenched out of him like a serrated blade, and he gasped at the pain of it.

"Who's dead, Lore?" Juliana prodded gently. "Tell me what's happened."

"C-Charlie," Lore choked out. "Charlie. He's…he's dead, Mother. Charlie's dead. I-I held him, I watched…"

His throat closed up and his sobs started afresh, his tears dampening his mother's hair.

"They…they said they planned to reformat him. 0700 hours. I took his place, I waited… But…they were late… And now…"

He blinked rapidly and stepped back, his breathing harsh and quick.

"It didn't have to happen. He didn't have to… It didn't have to happen! Oh… Oh, Father, I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry…"

"Lore, Lore stop this," Juliana said, taking him by the arm. "Lore, calm down. You're hyperventilating!"

"I…I can't… I thought— But, they—!"

"Good God," Dr. Tyler said, his eyes wide. "It's having some sort of meltdown!"

Lore's eyes widened at the sound of the scientist's voice, and he released a startlingly animalistic roar, his right fist slamming an impressive hole into the concrete wall mere centimeters from Tyler's nose.

Tyler swayed slightly, a hand pressed to his chest, but Lore was the one who collapsed, his limbs and head jerking several times before he lay still on the floor.

"No!" Juliana yelped, and fell to her knees beside him. She lifted his eyelids, checking for any sort of reaction, then clenched her jaw.

"You!" She glared up at the scientists. "All of you! Help me get him into that lab. We have to stabilize his systems – now!"

"But, we—" Tyler started.

Juliana's eyes blazed blue flames.

"Don't. You. Dare. But. Me," she snarled. "Just get your ignorant arses down here and help me lift my son onto that table."

"Yes, ma'am," Tyler said, and gestured for the others to assist.

"Please, don't do this, Lore, not now," Juliana muttered between gritted teeth, staggering under the android's weight. "Your father needs you. You have to hold on…"

To Be Continued…


	19. Chapter 19

Part Nineteen  
Terlina III, some seven years later  
An Interlude…

Soong stared down at his wife's still body, listening to the soft bleeps and hums of the machines that kept her breathing, kept her heart beating, her blood flowing to her slowly dying brain as the synaptic scan efficiently mapped its fading neural pathways…

He had returned to Omicron Theta twice since the attack by that ridiculous, oversized snowflake. The thing had ravaged all biological life on the colony world, its energy beams breaking down and absorbing all plant and animal matter…but it had left the buildings, machines and equipment pretty much intact. Upon landing his shuttle, Soong had found himself walking through an eerie ghost town: a damp, muddy ruin with no grass, no trees, no crops, the prefab structures already showing signs of neglect and decay…

Both trips, Soong had moved quickly, cautiously, staying only long enough to fill his shuttle with medical equipment, replicators, furniture, computer supplies, construction materials – anything he could bring back to his little makeshift retreat on Terlina III, anything he could scavenge that might make his wife more comfortable.

Terlina III...

Soong found the irony of this latest exile acutely painful. After all Lore's begging, his pleading to return there… And now...

There had been so many warning signs, right from the start. But, Soong had brushed them all away, passing them off as childish whining, a quirk of programming, too wrapped up in his own concerns to listen to his son, to actually note his feelings…

 

Father, I want to go home! Back to Terlina III. I don't want to stay here.

Lore, this is our home. Right here on Omicron Theta. It's time you got used to it.

I don't want to get used to it! I hate this place – I hate these people! Please, please, Father, don't make me stay…

 

Of course, Lore had still been a computer then, and very young. His vocal pleas had quieted to the occasional grumble following his holographic upgrades. Then, later, after Soong's trial, when he'd returned to the colony as a full-fledged android…

Well, the situation had been different. Lore finally had his freedom, the ability to go and come as he pleased, where he pleased… No longer a child, a boy to be nurtured and protected, but a man, an adult who needed his space, his independence…

Or, so his father had thought.

"How could I have known?"

How could he have known? How could he have seen what Lore had worked so hard to hide? The simmering anger, the slowly heating rage bubbling and boiling just behind the android's cocky smile…

Why?

"You saw it, Julie," Soong whispered, pulling his chair closer to his wife's bedside. "You suspected what he was doing, that he was working to sabotage us, our family, his own brother…long before that crystal entity…thing. Why didn't I see, why didn't I help him, why couldn't I stop this before…before…."

Soong sighed deeply, gently stroking his wife's soft, auburn hair. Her eyes moved just slightly beneath closed lids. A response to his touch? His voice? Or just another spasm of a failing nervous system?

He'd stopped by their child's gravesite, the first time he'd returned to the colony. It had been unrecognizable without the flowers, the grass…the chestnut tree with the fire-red flowers his wife had loved so much… From there, he'd taken an abandoned speeder to the caves…just to see…

His other boy had still been there. His youngest. Lying where Soong had positioned him, on a stone slab just outside the hidden entrance to the cave complex the colonists had worked so hard to complete, his eyes closed, his arms straight by his sides. So still…

It wouldn't have taken much. Soong had set a proximity detector to activate the android should a humanoid form come within ten feet of the slab. It would have been a simple matter to walk toward him, brush the dust from his dark hair, wait for those golden eyes to open…

But he'd driven on, on to the house, his lab, hunting for materials…the materials he needed…

To save Juliana.

He would come back, he'd told himself at the time. He could always come back. Once Juliana was settled, once he'd turned that old prefab shack into a suitable home, he'd come back for them. For both his boys.

But, the second time he returned, he'd found the slab empty and his youngest son gone. The standard-issue bootprints in the sand indicated he'd been taken by Starfleet, to the ship sent to investigate the colony's destruction.

Shaken, Soong had run into the caves, to the hidden chamber where he'd locked Lore away…

But, nothing there had been disturbed. The Starfleet away team had simply done what Starfleet always did: note the obvious, grab a token trophy, and move on. But, such was the way of bloated bureaucracy. With all its formal procedures and rolls of red tape, it would probably take the Federation another twenty or thirty years to scrape up enough curiosity and resources to actually scrutinize the colony's remains.

In the meantime, Lore could stay where he was…until his father had a chance to think…

How could this have happened?

"Why, Julie?" he whispered to unhearing ears. "I thought...I thought things were going well, that our lives were finally getting back on track. Why did it go so wrong?"

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include TNG: Datalore; Brothers; Silicon Avatar; Inheritance.
> 
> Next time, we go back in time for Act Two of this story. Data's part is coming up soon! :) Thanks for reading, and thanks so much for your comments! Stay Tuned!


	20. Chapter 20

Part Twenty  
Omicron Theta Science Colony  
Soong Residence, early afternoon…

Bright eyes,  
Burning like fire.  
Bright eyes,  
How can you close and fail?  
How can the light that burned so brightly  
Suddenly burn so pale?  
Bright eyes…

Soong ground his teeth and turned his frustrated glare to his wife, busy at Lore's workstation.

No, correction. It was Juliana's workstation now. Since their return home, Lore hadn't shown much interest in their work. He hadn't shown much interest in anything, except—

Bright eyes,  
Burning like fire.  
Bright eyes,  
How can you close and fail?  
How can the light that burned so brightly  
Suddenly burn so pale?  
Bright eyes…

Soong's fists clenched and he stood, his chair clattering loudly against the floor. Juliana jumped and blinked up at him in surprise.

"Noon…?"

"That's it!" he said. "I swear, Juliana, I can't take it anymore. If I have to listen to that damned song one more time…!"

"Oh, no," Juliana warned, rising to her feet. "Noonian, don't you dare go in there. Not with that attitude!"

"It's my house, I'll go where I damn well please," Soong snapped. "That boy's been sulking long enough. How an android of Lore's intelligence can just sit there, day after day, watching that same bizarre cartoon over and over and over again—!"

"Watership Down…" Juliana said softly, an aching sadness creasing her features.

"Whatever the damn thing's called, I'm turning it off, right now," Soong proclaimed, and marched for the door.

"Stop!" Juliana said firmly, cutting him off before he could reach the corridor. "You are not going to barge in there and start yelling. It'll only lead to the same argument as before, and I won't have it!"

"Then, what do you suggest I do?" Soong demanded. "Honestly, Juliana, if I didn't know my own work so well I'd swear a stranger came back on that shuttle with us, not—"

He clenched his fists and lowered his head, his heart aching for the bright, cocky boy he'd known; the eager helper, always by his side with a wry smile, a snide aside…

"Not my Lore," he finished quietly.

Juliana reached for his hands, and sighed.

"I don't know everything that happened at that institute…we'll probably never really know," she said. "But however much he may have changed on the outside, I know…I feel…the android that came home with us is our Lore. Your son will come back to you, Noon, you just have to be patient with him. He's been through so much—"

"Yeah, well, he's not the only one," Soong grumbled. "The last year's been hard on all of us, Julie, not just Lore."

Juliana released his hands and crossed her arms, as if cold.

"You weren't there, Noon," she said. "You didn't see that lab – Charlie's poor little body… They'd taken him apart…those…those so called scientists! Taken him apart and pieced him back together and, still, our Charlie managed to survive. He kept clinging to his life until the very end, and Lore…he saw it, Noon. He saw it all…"

She shivered and strode over to lean against her desk, holding back her tears with a shaky sob.

Soong swallowed and slowly walked across the room to place a hand on her shoulder.

"Look, whatever happened there happened. I can't fix that," he said, struggling to hold back his frustration. "But, despite everything, the android in that room out there is in perfect working order. Yes, he suffered some emotional blows during his time on Galor IV, but that's life."

He stepped away and ran a hand through his graying hair, expelling a deep sigh through his nose.

"Lore is twenty-one now, Julie," he said. "He's not a child. But, to function as an adult, he has to learn to work through the lows as well as the highs, and he can't do that if we continue to allow him to camp in our living room, staring at kiddie rubbish until that positronic brain of his rusts out of his ears! He needs to get out, Juliana, make friends, start a life of his own!"

"A life of his own?" Juliana exclaimed incredulously. "Have you forgotten so quickly? We won a minor skirmish in that courtroom, Noon, not a war. Outside this house, Lore remains a machine, an invention! He has no rights, no standing as a living being, no citizenship—"

"And he never will unless he pries himself off that couch and starts showing this ignorant galaxy that he can earn those things: on his own, by himself!" Soong retorted angrily. "It's up to him to stand up and prove he's alive – that he is a sentient, thinking, feeling being. If that trial taught me anything, it's that I can't go out there and prove it for him. And, neither can you. After all, Lore chose to become an android, didn't he – to swap the CPU I constructed for him for D-6's humanoid shell? If he wants to be a man so badly, he can damn well start acting like one!"

Juliana pursed her lips and glared.

"What?" Noonian exclaimed. "What's that look? You have to know I'm right about this."

"Sometimes," Juliana said coldly, logging off her station with an angry jab of her finger, "I wonder who the android in this family really is."

Soong wrinkled his brow.

"Now, what is that supposed to mean?"

"Work it out," Juliana said, and strode past him, out the door. "I'm going to talk with our son."

*******

Juliana found Lore just where she knew she'd find him: in the dark, lying flat on the living room couch in front of the viewer, his silvery CPU box cradled in his arms like a teddy bear. She sucked in her cheeks and shook her head, her heart aching for the troubled boy she saw there.

"Lore, love," she said gently. "I was just about to make myself a pot of tea. Would you like me to bring you a cup?"

"I'm an android, Mother. I don't need your damned tea," Lore muttered from the dimness.

"All right," she said gamely. "How about a spot of company, then?"

She moved toward the couch and tapped his sock-clad feet.

"Scooch over a bit, and let's watch the ending together. I like this movie too, you know."

"Yeah…I know…"

Lore breathed a world-weary sigh and heavily, reluctantly, pushed himself up into a sitting position. Juliana sat beside him and waited, patiently, until his exhausted pride gave out and he slumped dejectedly against her, resting his head on her shoulder. She held him close and rubbed his arm, trying not to react to the way the shifting light from the screen highlighted the tear tracks on his pale cheeks, the yellow puffiness around his golden eyes…

Juliana gently stroked his hair, hearing his sob-like sigh as she pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

"How can you…"

He choked a little, and pushed away from her, moving to the far end of the sofa, his CPU box clutched in his arms.

"How can I what, Lore?" she asked.

"How can you stand to stay here?" he snapped, his yellow eyes burning. "Why don't you hate me, like he does? Like I do…"

"Because you don't deserve that, Lore," she told him firmly. "And your father doesn't hate you. He just needs time to adjust. You both do."

"Don't make excuses for him," Lore said, his face fixed in a sullen frown. "Ever since he first saw me like this, he's been distant...cold. Because I messed with his work, you see. I derailed his longest running project. Me."

"Lore—"

"It's true!" he exclaimed. "When I...stole D-6's body... I fundamentally altered the only successful creation he's ever really made on his own, and I can never undo that damage. I can never...never go back..."

His fingers tightened around his silvery box, his golden eyes filling with bitter, unshed tears.

"My, aren't we in a mood," Juliana commented. "Maybe we should change your name from Lore to Marvin."

Lore wrinkled his nose.

"Funny," he said, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "I was wrong, Mother. So wrong…about everything. I thought, if I could just force Graves to admit… Everything would fall into place. Father would have his reputation back. He'd take the reins from that two-faced, malignant narcissist and he would set things right. He'd make those institute people understand that…that Charlie and I…"

He lowered his head and squeezed his CPU against his chest.

"But, that's not how justice works out in the 'real' world, is it," he muttered darkly. "'Innocent' does not equal 'vindicated.' Especially when there's no real verdict on the books. After all, 'Graves,' is a brand sponsors trust. 'Soong' is just some awkward eccentric with only a big mouth and a collection of defective positronic prototypes to his name. Archie, Bertie…Charlie… Lore…"

"That's not fair," Juliana said. "You're not defective, Lore. Not you, not Charlie. You may be a little depressed right now, but that's—"

"No, I'll tell you what's not fair," Lore interrupted angrily. "It's not fair that Graves could just cut a deal like that, decide to drop all charges, instead of being forced to face what he did to Charlie…to me…! It's disgusting."

Juliana pursed her lips and nodded slowly, but Lore wasn't finished with his outburst.

"I don't understand…" he said, his voice tight with angry frustration. "We were forced to endure all that…that pain, that humiliation, for an entire year! And nothing's changed, has it? Nothing's gotten any better. Father's work is no more respected now than it was before. Hell – outside this colony and Galor IV, his trial barely rated public attention! All court records have been sealed tight by the Daystrom Institute, labeled a mere 'internal' dispute over 'proprietary' information. And that's that! Graves is going to step down from his post with full honors next year – not to mention with enough backing to continue his research anywhere he damn well likes. And – lucky us – we get to return to this backwater rock! No harm, no foul, no...anything."

He sank back further into the shadows.

"I told Charlie he was a living being. I told him an android's choices matter, that our freedom…our individuality…our deaths… That they actually mean something. But, no one cares, do they. No one out there wants a conscious, thinking android around. Androids are objects; computers are tools. Things like us…we're constructs, not people. Never people…"

He lowered his head to his knees, his mussed hair falling over his pale forehead.

"God, I hate humans."

"You don't mean that, Lore," Juliana said gently.

"I do," he said, and looked straight at her. "Charlie died, Mother. He died in my arms, and not one human being in that whole damned institute could grant him enough basic respect to acknowledge it. That's because you have to live before you can die. You need a living soul that can pass on." He gestured to the screen, where the film's credits were rolling, unheeded. "Rabbits can die. Seagulls, snakes, fish, insects, grasses, flowers – even bacteria die! Androids just shut down."

"I know you're alive, Lore," Juliana said. "You have a mind, and a soul that—"

"Do I?" Lore demanded flatly. "Or did Father just program me to think I do?"

"If you're alive enough to question your existence," she told him, "you're certainly alive enough to die. I miss Charlie too, Lore. So does your father."

Lore shook his head.

"No - Father doesn't care. Not really," he said. "Just like he didn't care about Bertie, and he doesn't care about me. I endured a synaptic transfer to save my brother because my father convinced me I had a responsibility to look out for him. And the irony is – if I hadn't bothered, Charlie would be here now! That personality matrix you two have been working on would have been installed in the D-6 frame and I… I'd still be the positronic computer Father wants by his side. Instead…"

He scowled and held his empty box close.

"I'm in here," he tapped at his forehead. "And, he's already moved on to his next project."

"I don't understand," Juliana said. "If you're talking about D-6, you know very well your father and I have been designing those programs for years now. It's only natural to start construction on a D-7 frame. Besides, you shouldn't be alone, Lore…especially not after all you've been through. I think having a new little brother to care about…or, perhaps a little sister…might be just the thing to help you get over this rough bump."

"I don't want another brother," Lore snapped. "I don't want you and Father to create another android! Has this past year taught you two nothing? What the hell gives you the right to keep churning out these conscious, feeling androids that have no place, no future?"

Juliana regarded him, rather taken aback.

"Do you really believe that, Lore?" she asked. "That you have no future?"

"Do you think I would have said it if I didn't mean it?" he retorted.

"In that case," Juliana said, and got to her feet, "I think your father may have been right after all. It's past time you left this dark room and stepped out into the light. There's much more to this universe than that terrible institute, Lore – and this house. Tomorrow, I'm taking you to work with me. And after that, I think we'll see about getting you a job."

"What do you mean, a 'job'?" Lore scoffed. "Who the hell would hire a machine? And, for what? I have no experience, no credentials, no degrees—"

"You have wits and cleverness and the ability to put them to good and creative use," Juliana stated. "And that's more than enough to start. Now, you can stay in here until suppertime if you wish, but I want to see your face at the table tonight. We are going to have a proper family meal, you will eat every bite of food I place before you, and when we've finished the three of us are going for a walk. Outside. Under the trees. Am I understood, Lore?"

Lore scowled at the screen, where the movie he'd set to loop ad infinitum was just starting up again.

"I've never walked under the trees before," he said. "I could never go further than the yard…"

"Well," Juliana said, "perhaps some things in your life have changed for the better after all."

Lore regarded her, but didn't reply. Juliana leaned in to kiss his cheek, then smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead.

"I love you, son," she said. "Don't forget that."

The android nodded, just slightly, but she could see her words had had an effect. She left him there with his movie, and headed for the kitchen to plan and prepare their meal.

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include: Watership Down, 1978 animated film directed by Martin Rosen; "Bright Eyes," song written by Mike Batt for the movie, sung by Art Garfunkel; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
> 
> Thanks for your comments and reviews! I hope you liked this chapter! :)


	21. Chapter 21

_Part Twenty-One_

 _Omicron Theta Science Colony_

Rhoda Forrester had seen the android here and there, usually hanging around just at the outskirts of town. He would pick a place and stand there, often for hours, staring at the people through his odd, yellow eyes as they walked through their daily routines.

"There's something wrong with that machine," Rhoda's aunt would say, quickening her pace to escape the android's gaze. "Something should be done."

Rhoda's uncle would shake his head and pull the pipe from his mouth.

"That thing ain't hurtin' no one, Ruthie," he'd say. "'Sides, ain't like there's a whole lot in the way of entertainment round these parts. Ask me, it's just curious."

"Ask me," her aunt would snap, "your sister Eileen should have made Soong leave that awful machine at the Daystrom with its so-called 'brothers'. Thing like that belongs on display, not loose in the street!"

Then, she'd huff and grab Rhoda's hand.

"Keep your eyes ahead, Rho," she'd admonish. "Don't look at it."

Rhoda did as her aunt said. She kept her eyes ahead and quickened her pace until they'd left the peculiar android well behind.

But, her aunt's concerns weren't Rhoda's. If anything, Aunt Ruthie's fear only tickled Rhoda's curiosity…and her memory.

"Tim," she asked her brother one warm, Saturday morning. "Do you remember when we were little?"

"What of it?" Tim asked, his eyes fixed on his game padd.

"There were these two robots that used to play with us – what were their names?"

"Charlie was one," Tim said distractedly, pounding his thumbs against the screen as he fought to beat the level. "Then there was…Brett? Burt?"

"Bertie!" Rhoda exclaimed. "That was it: Bertie and Charlie!"

"Yeah…" Tim muttered, still more focused on his game than his little sister's questions. "They were the ones the Daystrom Institute confiscated from Dr. Soong. You know - Mom had to go to court to defend him in the trial a few years ago?"

"Yeah, I know," Rhoda said. "That's why her law practice got bigger, and she has to keep going off-world all the time now to try cases. We still don't have a real court system of our own here on Omicron Theta."

The game padd let out a clanging sound-effect, and Tim snarled.

"No – no, no, I didn't mean to hit that one – gah! Stupid math riddles…"

Tim grunted in frustration and put the game aside.

"Look, Max and the guys are getting a couple of Parrises squares teams together at the athletics center. I gotta go."

"You know Mom and Dad don't want you playing Parrises squares," Rhoda said, frowning as her brother got up and headed for the closet for his padded, blue and black uniform.

"What do they care," Tim retorted, stuffing the uniform, some jaw and joint guards, and a pair of rubbery black shoes into a bag and slinging it over his shoulder. "It's not like they're here to object. Besides, I'm fifteen. I don't need their permission!"

"Mom says it's too dangerous. She says you should wait until you're at least seventeen before—"

"What are you, Mom's echo?" Tim grunted. "Renny Marr plays all the time, and he's only thirteen."

"Shouldn't you tell Aunt Ruthie and Uncle Jake you're going?"

"You tell 'em," Tim said, already heading through the door. "I'll be back after lunch."

Rhoda clenched her fists and glared at the door as it slid closed behind her brother's departing back.

"Fine!" she snapped. "If he can go do whatever he wants, I can too. Hey, Aunt Ruthie!" she shouted into the house, pulling her purple jacket from the closet and slipping it on. "I'm going to the ballpark! See you at lunch!"

"What? Wait—!" Aunt Ruthie's voice called back from upstairs, her footsteps charging down the hall, then the staircase. "Don't you go out on your own, young lady! Hang on just one minute and I'll—"

But the living room was empty. Rhoda had already gone.

*******

Rhoda didn't go to the ballpark. She went quite the other way, past her father's corn field and straight into town through the back lane. She came out near the middle of the main street, just in time to see Dr. O'Donnell, Dr. Soong's wife, coming out of the Fresh Food Market, her anti-gravity sled loaded with groceries. She looked tired, and as she stretched her arms behind her back, her slightly bulging abdomen showed clearly beneath her light, spring jacket.

Rhoda ran over to her, making sure to look first before she crossed the street.

"Hi, Dr. O'Donnell," she said. "How's the baby doing?"

"Oh, he's making himself known, that's for sure," she said in her pretty, lilting accent.

"So, you know it's a boy? Have you decided on a name?"

Dr. O'Donnell smiled.

"We've known that for a while now," she said. "Our boy will be called Danny. Danny Soong."

"That's a pretty good name," Rhoda said. "Better than mine, anyway. Tim and Dad are always teasing me, calling me 'Rhoda-dendron'."

Dr. O'Donnell laughed a little.

"But that's lovely," she said, "and certainly nothing to be ashamed of. But, how are you this fine morning? Sure, the hyacinths and new tree buds do make it smell like spring on Earth."

Rhoda shrugged, trying not to think about how angry her aunt would be at the way she'd run out of the house on her own.

"I'm OK. You want some help?"

"Why thank you, Rhoda," Dr. O'Donnell said. "I did have Lore with me today, but he's gone off somewhere again. Used to be, I could barely shift that boy out of the house. But, ever since…" Her blue eyes lowered, and she sighed. "Well, it's getting harder and harder to pin him to one place."

"Lore," Rhoda repeated, helping the scientist lift the grocery bags into the back of her speeder. "Is he the android with the pale face? The one who watches the street every morning before school?"

"Does he?" Dr. O'Donnell wrinkled her forehead. "We may have to have another talk, Lore and I…"

"Eeww, yuck!" Rhoda exclaimed, dropping a crinkly package into the trunk. "You really eat fig bars!"

Dr. O'Donnell laughed.

"That's Noonian," she said. "He loves those things. Myself, I prefer strawberry."

"Me too," Rhoda said, and they shared a smile as Dr. O'Donnell closed the trunk and set the sled to return to its corral at the front of the store.

"Here, dear," Dr. O'Donnell said, pressing a credit chip into her hand. "This is for helping me. Go pick yourself out a nice treat. And, be sure to give your mother my regards when she gets back from Starbase."

"I will," Rhoda said, squeezing the chip happily. "Thanks, Dr. O'Donnell!"

"Please, it's Juliana," she said, getting into the speeder. "If you should see Lore, tell him I couldn't wait, and he's to come straight home. Good bye, Rhoda."

"Bye, Juliana!"

She waved as the speeder headed down the street, then turned to head into the Fresh Food Market – only to bump into a tall, slender man dressed all in black.

"Oh, excuse me—"

"No, excuse me," the man said, and Rhoda looked up to see Lore's white-gold smirk. "Left without me, did she? How typical."

"Juliana told me you're to go straight home," Rhoda said, her heart pounding against her ribs as she stumbled back, putting the lamp post between herself and the android.

"Did she, now…" He regarded the girl through narrowed eyes. "You're sure she said straight home?"

Rhoda nodded.

"Well…" Lore pretended to look around, moving his hands in front of him as if making measurements. "Looks like there are quite a few buildings standing between me and our house. Can't go straight from here. Guess I'll just have to hang around for a while."

Rhoda snorted a little.

"You're pretty weird," she said.

Lore raised his pale eyebrows.

"You think so?"

She nodded and smiled, inching a little closer.

"Can I ask you a question?"

Lore shrugged and leaned back against the market's prefab wall, tucking his hands behind his head.

"Why not," he said. "Mother is constantly telling me I should find someone to talk to. Might as well be you."

Rhoda giggled, and stepped even closer, leaving the lamp post behind.

"Why do you watch the street?" she asked.

"I don't watch the street," he told her.

"But I've seen you," she said. "Almost every day before school."

"You've seen me watching the people," he corrected. "Not the street."

He peered down at her.

"I've watched you," he said. "Walking with your aunt and uncle, is that right?"

She nodded.

"Yet, I've noticed your brother gets to walk to school on his own."

Rhoda scuffed her shoe against the pavement.

"He gets to do everything on his own," she muttered bitterly.

"Doesn't seem quite fair, does it," Lore mused, and Rhoda closed the distance entirely, leaning against the wall by his side.

"I'm not supposed to talk to you, you know," she said.

"I can keep a secret," Lore said, and she smiled from ear to ear.

"Is Dr. O'Donnell really your mother?" she asked.

"She likes to think so," Lore said, his yellow eyes scanning over the busy street.

"Are you excited about your new brother?"

Lore grimaced, and even seemed to shiver a little.

" _Brothers_ ," he grunted. "Replacement parts...to repair the broken family unit..."

"Huh?"

"Forget it," he growled, and for a long moment they just stood in silence, watching the people walk by.

When it started to look like Lore really wasn't going to say anything more, she asked him: "So… If you don't watch the street, what do you do all day?"

Lore's lips stretched, just slightly, and he turned his golden eyes to the bustling farm supply depot across the street.

"See Mitch Wells over there?" He pointed to a hefty man with a yellowish mustache and a battered old hat. "He goes around bragging he's kicked his tobacco habit. But, I know he sneaks a few pipes. Every day at lunch."

A woman brushed past them into the Food Market, her eyes purposely fixed ahead to avoid Lore's gaze.

"Know her?" he said.

"That's Mrs. Emerson," Rhoda said.

"Her husband Roger calls her Dot," Lore said, "but she prefers the more dignified 'Dorothea.'" He smirked. "Pretentious prig. Puts on airs like some grand queen bee just because, when the first colonists drew straws, her house came out first in line for construction."

"Why should that matter?" Rhoda asked.

"Hierarchy," Lore sneered. "Pecking order. Know how I know?"

"How?"

He shot her a rather conspiratorial look.

"Ol' Queen Dot likes to hold court with her minion friends over in Cathy's Tea House every Wednesday at four," he said. "They sip the local tea and nibble tiny sandwiches and trade what they call 'gossip'. But what you really see, if you care to watch, is four bored old farts with watercress between their teeth making up a lot of mean-spirited rumors and innuendo about their neighbors."

Rhoda looked up at him.

"You really know a lot about the people here, don't you."

Lore smirked, and chuffed a slight laugh through his nose.

"What did I tell you about secrets?" he said.

"You can keep them?"

Lore looked down at her, his golden eyes eerily intense.

"Why did you come here today?" he asked. "All alone?"

"How do you know I'm alone?" she challenged.

"Don't insult me, little girl," he said. "Just answer the question."

"I came here to find you, if you want to know," she snapped. "And I'm not a little girl! I'm almost thirteen!"

Lore's brow furrowed, and he lowered his arms to his sides.

"Why?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I guess…mostly…"

She frowned and straightened her posture.

"To show I'm not scared of you, like Aunt Ruthie."

Lore snorted.

"Maybe you should be."

Rhoda's frown deepened.

"You still didn't say why you stand around by yourself all the time," she said. "If you want to get to know people better, why don't you just go up and talk to them?"

"That might sound like a logical suggestion," Lore said, "to someone who didn't know humans. I do. And, I have learned that their actions reveal much more about them than their words."

"So, you just hang around staring at people?"

"In part."

"What's the other part?" she asked.

"I'm waiting," he said, leaning back against the wall as he watched a father protectively pull his small daughter up into his arms before walking past him into the market.

"Waiting for what?"

"For one of these 'good folks' to speak to me."

"I'm speaking to you."

He slid his eyes over to her.

"You don't count."

"Because I'm a kid?"

"Precisely," he said, and smirked. "Give it a few years, and you'll be passing me with your nose in the air just like the rest of these small-time frauds."

"That's what you think?"

"That's what I know."

Rhoda scowled.

"Then, I take it back," she snapped. "You're not just weird. You're a total jerk!"

Lore barked a sharp laugh.

"If I'm a 'total jerk', why don't you leave?"

"Is that what you want?" she challenged. "Because I will."

Lore slid his eyes away.

"I thought so," Rhoda said in satisfaction, and gave his arm a little nudge with her elbow. "Hey," she said. "Do you eat?"

"I can," he said, rather suspiciously.

"Dr. O'Donnell gave me this for helping her load her groceries." She held up her credit chip. "I was going to get some strawberry bars. You want one?"

"I prefer fig," he said.

"Too gross!"

She wrinkled her nose and dashed toward the market's sliding doors, then paused to cast a grin over her shoulder.

"Hey, Lore. If you're not here when I get back, don't expect me to come talk to you again."

"Don't worry," he said, rather grimly. "The damage is already done."

"Damage?"

Lore smirked darkly.

"You'll find out," he said. "Then again, you're young. You might get away with just a few scoldings."

He pushed off the wall and started to walk away.

"Hey – wait!" Rhoda called after him. "Don't you want a strawberry bar?"

Lore paused, then turned and walked back to her, fixing her with his stare like a hawk tracks a mouse.

"I'm going to tell you this because, many years ago, when I served as your house computer, you were the only member of your family to call me by my name," he said, watching her blink rapidly as she tried to recall the memory. "I am not your friend, Rhoda Forrester. Nor do I wish to be. You're only hurting yourself by letting these townspeople see you talking to the likes of me."

"Why?" she demanded.

"Just step inside that market," he said, his pale brows quirking above his golden eyes. "They'll tell you. Society is usually quick to beat its strays back into the herd."

He smirked and raised his pale hand in a dismissive wave.

"See you around, kid," he said, as if it were a promise.

But, the budding trees were wearing their fall colors before Rhoda Forrester saw the strange android again. And when she did, he was standing beside a look-alike. A nearly exact duplicate Lore called D-7.

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References Include - TNG: Silicon Avatar.
> 
> Reviews are always welcome! Please let me know what you think! :)


	22. Chapter 22

_Part Twenty-Two_

_Omicron Theta_

_Soong Residence_

"It was a miscarriage. The boy was born prematurely."

Tom Handy's voice carried over from the long hallway, where he paced as he spoke into his personal comm unit. Soong and Juliana sat silently in the kitchen, just listening, neither one meeting the other's solemn gaze.

"Yes…yes… Surfactant," Handy said. "Surfactant. Yeah, it's this slippery sort of molecule in your lungs. Reduces surface tension. Huh? What's it for? It's so you can breathe in and out. Yeah. The poor kid's lungs weren't mature enough to produce all the proteins and lipids that form the stuff. Lungs couldn't open, just stuck together. No…no, there was nothing anyone could do. No, we've just got the clinic. Bare basics, you know that. But even in an Earth hospital, there's no way they could have— Hm? Well, not in time to make any difference. Even if they tried that, there's still oxygen deprivation, brain damage, the whole mess. Yeah, even in this day and age. Yeah, that's right. Unavoidable tragedy. Natural causes. Yeah. So, then we're good? Yeah, thanks. I'll tell them."

They heard the soft bleep as Handy ended the call, his footsteps on the carpet as he walked back to the kitchen…

"Well, that should satiate our friendly local press," he said dryly, moving to resume his seat at the little round dinner table across from the unnervingly still pair. "Ari, the editor, she sends her condolences. Eileen's handling all the official documents. Registering the death certificate…"

Handy glanced up at them.

"He's the first," he said. "The first of us colonists to…you know… Pass on. Your little Danny may not have been here long, but he made history just the same."

Juliana stood and strode out of the kitchen.

Handy looked as if he'd been hit.

"Juliana? I-I didn't…!" he exclaimed, rising quickly to his feet. "I was just trying to say your boy won't be forgotten. I didn't mean to—"

"It's not you, Tom," Soong said, staring in the direction his wife had gone. For the first time since Handy had known him, the aging scientist sounded truly…frail. "I doubt she heard a word you said."

*******

In the living room across the hall, Lore tightened his jaw, his golden eyes burning. He'd been sitting there alone since Tom Handy came over, listening, observing…

Now, he clenched his fists and stood, his gaze fixed on the little game table where Charlie and Bertie had spent so many hours playing checkers.

He felt his eyes begin to sting and he had to turn away, the memory of his brother's voice rising from his churning thoughts…

_"Charlie… Do you love me?"_

_"Oh, yes, brother! Absolutely!"_

_"Why?"_

_"That is a silly, silly question."_

_"Humor me."_

_"But, it's so silly! I love you because you're you! You are first, and first is best! You can talk with Father and Mother, understand them in a way I have never been able to achieve. There is always…a gap. Mother says it's because you're older, but I know it's more than that. Our construction is different…and yours is the superior mind."_

_"You really believe that."_

_"Of course! Bertie and I discussed this often. It was our goal to learn as much as we could, to practice our cognitive skills at every opportunity so that, when we turned eighteen, we would both be smart enough to act and think exactly like you! That's why we played so much checkers! To practice, practice, practice!"_

Lore swallowed hard, roughly forcing the computer-perfect memories into a long-term storage file and sealing it tight with an encryption key.

"And the humans say Danny is the first," he muttered to the ghosts in his mind. "The first to die. More like the first to be acknowledged in their records. To them, my brothers, you barely registered as broken household appliances, yet dear, dead Danny is to be memorialized in their statistics sheets - a permanent point of trivia in Federation colonial history. R.I.P. Deceased Colonist Number One, the only child of Juliana and Noonian Soong!"

Lore's nostrils flared, his teeth clenched hard against the red-hot fury seething inside him.

"Of course, Danny dearest was constructed of cells, not silicon. And when cells shut down, the humans call it 'death.'"

He glared at the dark vidscreen, at his own pale reflection in the glass.

"The only death that counts…"

*******

"I think…" Juliana sighed deeply and sat on the edge of the bed. "Noonian, I think we must be cursed."

"That's nonsense, and you know it," Soong said angrily.

She glared up at him, her fierce blue eyes rimmed with red.

"Danny's gone, don't you understand that!" she snapped. "Don't you understand what it means! Everything we talked about, everything we wished for… All our plans, our dreams… Our family! It's all over now!"

"More nonsense," Soong asserted. "We're still here, and Lore. And, if D-7's latest functionality tests are any indication—"

"Don't talk to me about D-7!" she cried. "I don't want to hear it!"

"He's our child too, Juliana," Soong retorted. "More yours than mine if you take his programming into consideration. You wanted to design an android with the soul of a man - that's how you put it. Our son's virtual twin; a self-aware positronic mind with the capacity for imagination, creativity, ethics, musicianship, sexuality, personal growth—"

"No!" she shrieked, rising to her feet to confront him. "Not anymore! Damn you, Noonian, can't you get it through that thick skull of yours? There isn't going to be any 'twin' experiment now, no grand twenty-plus year comparative study of the development of the human and positronic brain! D-7 has no twin! And, I can't live in this house knowing…"

"Knowing what?" Soong demanded.

"Knowing that machine downstairs is still functional," she cried, "while our child… Our child is…"

She choked, and Noonian watched as she collapsed into tears. After a long, awkward moment, he shuffled over to sit down beside her. She leaned her face into his shoulder, and sobbed.

"Oh, Noon…" she muffled against his sleeve. "Everything was going so well. I…I can't understand…why…!"

"It's not your fault, Julie," he said, wrapping his arm around her. "It's nature. There was nothing malicious or preordained about it. Now, I know it hurts. I swear to you, it's killing me too. And poor Lore… He's barely said a word to anyone since we got back from the clinic. But, we have to acknowledge that none of us could have changed what happened."

"I can't believe that."

"Julie, you—"

"No," she said flatly. "Maybe it wasn't preordained that we should lose this child. But, I cannot accept that what happened was not malicious, even if it was nature's doing. He was my child, Noonien. I wanted to hear his laughter, watch him grow up... To have that...to have him stolen away...! There is nothing more spiteful, more poisonous in this world!"

Soong sighed and rested his cheek against his wife's auburn hair.

"This isn't the end, Julie," he said. "We've suffered loss before. Remember how hard it was losing Bertie? Then, Charlie—"

"You are not comparing our child to your androids," Juliana said flatly, pulling away from his embrace.

"Our androids," Soong corrected. "And, no. I'm just saying it's no good giving up. After all, we are both scientists. And, in science, things sometimes go wrong. Projects fail. That doesn't mean we never get up and try again."

"Projects!" Juliana exclaimed, rising to her feet. "Are you really so cold? Do you honestly see no difference between our son and those...those machines—"

Soong shook his head, prying himself up from the bed with a soft grunt of effort.

"Don't start this, Juliana," he said. "Not now."

"I want you to test the well again," she said, and he sighed.

"We've tested the water in this house at least eight times," he said. "The water is fine. The filter is fine. The mineral concentration is just a little higher in the summer because of the heat. That's why your tea tasted strange. Well, that and the hormones, but—"

"Don't put this down to hormones," she snapped. "You felt just as queasy as I did, and the effects lasted nearly two weeks."

"During which time we had the water tested, we had the filter tested, we had ourselves tested, and everything came out clean."

"Lore made us that tea, Noonian. He brought it to us every day for at least two months, always at the same time..."

"Lore was just trying to be considerate," Soong retorted. "He knows that local herbal stuff has always been your favorite. You keep at least half a dozen fancy tins in the cupboard, and they all tested clean too. There's nothing in that tea dangerous to us, or to Danny. Not even caffeine."

He stepped closer, placing a gentle hand on her arm.

"Now, I know you're angry and I know you're tired, and I know you think you need someone or something to blame. But fuming over some imagined conspiracy isn't helpful, and this bitter attitude you've been showing lately isn't fair to Lore. Or D-7. They lost a brother too, you know."

Juliana scrubbed a hand through her long, loose hair and turned toward the window.

"I know," she said. "I know, and I'm sorry. I'm just... I can't—"

She sighed.

"I'm not like you, Noonian," she said. "I can't chalk this down to...to science and nature and just move on. I'm going to need some time to come to terms with this. And, I'm going to need you to let me have that time."

She turned to face him.

"Can you do that, Noon?" she asked. "Can you try, just this once, to put me before your androids?"

"Our androids," he said again, but her expression only hardened further.

He pursed his lips, then nodded.

"All right, Juliana," he said quietly. "Whatever you need."

_To Be Continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References Include - TNG: Datalore; Brothers; Inheritance.
> 
> I had a hard time writing out this chapter. A really hard time. Such a hard time, I ended up procrastinating for...well...a ridiculously long time. But, I got a bunch of nudges on this story over the past couple of weeks, and another couple of nudges earlier this week, so I forced myself to break through the troublesome block and get this chapter done. It's my own fault for inventing Danny and connecting this story with 'Alternative Data' in my mind. But, next time Data will make a real appearance, and Lore's troubles will become more apparent. This chapter just had to get out of the way first. Sorry about the long wait, thanks so much for the nudges and for reading my story, and please stay tuned for more, coming soon! :D
> 
> Reviews Welcome! :D


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